---
title: The abbot’s eyes glistened when he heard that. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The abbot’s eyes glistened when he heard that. Who acts: eyes. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 10

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The abbot’s eyes glistened when he heard that.

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**Who acts:** eyes · **What happens:** glisten, hear · **To what, where:** that

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes), 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:pg2892:72:10
# text = The abbot’s eyes glistened when he heard that.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
5	glistened	glisten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	parataxis	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **glisten** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **hear** | past | the abbot's eyes | that |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer that=Stimulus |

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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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