---
title: Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove’s brea… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove’s breast. Who acts: eyes. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 25

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Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove’s breast.

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**Who acts:** eyes · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes), 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:pg2892:62:25
# text = Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove’s breast.
1	Her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	clear	clear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
7	as	as	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	dove	dove	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’s	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	breast	breast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	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 | One's eyes |  |  |  |  | wide *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | One's eyes *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as water | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | past | One's eyes *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as a dove's breast; grey *property* | tree rules |

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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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