---
title: This Cairide’ listened to the story when it was first told. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: This Cairide’ listened to the story when it was first told. Who acts: Cairide. 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/pg2892/72/19/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 19

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This Cairide’ listened to the story when it was first told.

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**Who acts:** Cairide · **What happens:** listen, tell · **To what, where:** Faery · **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 (Cairide), 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:pg2892:72:19
# text = This Cairide’ listened to the story when it was first told.
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	Cairide	Cairide	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’	'	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
4	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	12	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux:pass	_	_
11	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	12	advmod	_	_
12	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | past | this Cairide |  |  |  |  | to the story | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to story=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · passive |  | Faery |  |  |  | first *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |

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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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