---
title: Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous h… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous hill. Who acts: heart, head. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 8

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Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous hill.

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**Who acts:** heart, head · **What happens:** give, learn, climb · **To what, where:** way, venomous hill

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (heart, head), 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:pg2892:71:8
# text = Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous hill.
1	Almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
6	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	learned	learn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	venomous	venomous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	hill	hill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | head's heart | way |  |  |  | almost *property* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Theme |
| 2 | **learn** | past | head |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **climb** | to-infinitive | head *not said here* | venomous hill |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location hill=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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