---
title: My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and t… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and there the wolves dared chase me. Who acts: head, knees, wolves. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VI, 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/pg2892/7/35/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VI, sentence 35

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My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and there the wolves dared chase me.

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**Who acts:** head, knees, wolves · **What happens:** grow, jerk, tremble, dare, chase · **To what, where:** me

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VI. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (head, knees, wolves), 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:pg2892:7:35
# text = My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and there the wolves dared chase me.
1	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	dim	dim	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	jerked	jerk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	trembled	tremble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
17	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	20	expl	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	wolves	wolf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	dared	dare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
21	chase	chase	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	xcomp	_	_
22	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past | My head |  |  |  |  | heavy *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **jerk** | past | my knees |  |  |  |  |  | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **tremble** | past | my knees *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **dare** | past | the wolves |  |  | there |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 5 | **chase** | infinitive | the wolves *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |

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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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