---
title: There are few kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There are few kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was sore trouble in store for him. Who acts: few kings, sore trouble. 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 3

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There are few kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was sore trouble in store for him.

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**Who acts:** few kings, sore trouble · **What happens:** be, boast · **To what, where:** store

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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 (few kings, sore trouble), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2892:1900`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:63:3
# text = There are few kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was sore trouble in store for him.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	kings	king	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	boast	boast	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	10	advmod	_	_
10	kingly	kingly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	results	result	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
12	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	18	expl	_	_
18	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
19	sore	sore	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	trouble	trouble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
21	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	store	store	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
23	for	for	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **does** | present | few kings |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **boast** *speech: other* | can | few kings |  |  |  |  | of kingly results | vn complain-37.8 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **be** | past | sore trouble |  |  | store; there |  | for Ri | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in store=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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