---
title: They sat beyond the cave staring at me. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They sat beyond the cave staring at me. Who acts: grasses. 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VI, sentence 39

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They sat beyond the cave staring at me.

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**Who acts:** grasses · **What happens:** sit, stare · **To what, where:** cave

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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 (grasses), 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:pg2892:7:39
# text = They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	beyond	beyond	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	cave	cave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	staring	stare	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | grasses *= grass* |  |  | the cave |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent beyond cave=Location |
| 2 | **stare** | gerund | grasses *= grass* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at me | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at 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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