---
title: Her keen was sung by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide w… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Her keen was sung by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay. Who acts: poets, wife. 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 9

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Her keen was sung by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay.

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**Who acts:** poets, wife · **What happens:** sing, heave, keen · **To what, where:** keen, cairn, clay

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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 (poets, wife), 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:pg2892:63:9
# text = Her keen was sung by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay.
1	Her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	keen	keen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	sung	sing	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	poets	poet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	harpers	harper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	cairn	cairn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	ten	ten	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	acres	acre	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux:pass	_	_
17	heaved	heave	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
18	over	over	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	clay	clay	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | past · passive | poets and harpers | wife's keen |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location subject=Theme |
| 2 | **heave** | past · passive |  | a cairn |  | wife's clay |  |  | vn push-12 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 3 | **keen** |  | wife |  |  |  |  |  | nom keen «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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