---
title: He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle d… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle drawing to the shore. Who acts: Ireland, coracle. 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 18

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He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle drawing to the shore.

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**Who acts:** Ireland, coracle · **What happens:** gaze, brood, observe, draw · **To what, where:** coracle, shore

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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 (Ireland, coracle), 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:pg2892:63:18
# text = He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle drawing to the shore.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	gazing	gaze	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	brooding	brood	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
7	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
8	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	observed	observe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	coracle	coracle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	drawing	draw	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **gaze** | past · progressive | Ireland |  |  |  |  | thus *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **brood** | gerund | Ireland *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **observe** | past | Ireland | a coracle |  |  | day |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent coracle=Topic |
| 4 | **draw** | gerund | a coracle *not said here* |  |  | the shore |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent to shore=Destination |

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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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