---
title: I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled. Who acts: I, first time. 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 6

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I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled.

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**Who acts:** I, first time · **What happens:** smell, know · **To what, where:** turf

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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 (I, first time), 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:pg2892:7:6
# text = I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	smelled	smell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	turf	turf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	amod	_	_
10	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
12	sweet	sweet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
14	smelled	smell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **smell** | past | I | the turf |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer turf=Stimulus |
| 2 | **know** | past | I *not said here* |  |  |  | time |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **smell** | past | the first time |  |  |  |  |  | vn smell\_emission-43.3 «NP V»: agent=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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