---
title: “But how does that come about?” the abbot inquired. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “But how does that come about?” the abbot inquired. Who acts: that, abbot. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/72/16/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 16

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“But how does that come about?” the abbot inquired.

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**Who acts:** that, abbot · **What happens:** come about, inquire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (that, abbot), 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:pg2892:72:16
# text = “But how does that come about?” the abbot inquired.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
4	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nsubj	_	_
6	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
7	about	about	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come about** *in a quote* | present · do-support | that |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | the abbot |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/72/15/)
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