---
title: Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Who acts: hair. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/57/6/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 6

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Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles.

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**Who acts:** hair · **What happens:** be, stick up, poke out, hang down · **To what, where:** bushes

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hair), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:57:6
# text = Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	as	as	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	ink	ink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	wire	wire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	stuck	stick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
14	up	up	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	poked	poke	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	conj	_	_
17	out	out	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	hung	hang	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	16	conj	_	_
20	down	down	ADP	RP	_	19	compound:prt	_	_
21	about	about	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	_
24	in	in	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	bushes	bush	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	_
26	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
27	spikes	spike	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	conj	_	_
28	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	29	cc	_	_
29	tangles	tangle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | daughters's hair |  |  |  |  | as ink; black *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | daughters's hair *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as wire | tree rules |
| 3 | **stick up** | past | hair |  |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **poke out** | participle | hair *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **hang down** | participle | hair *not said here* |  |  | bushes and spikes and tangles |  | about daughters's heads | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent about head=Location |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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