---
title: Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of each… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of each could not have been spanned by ten broad men. Who acts: ten broad men. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 21

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Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of each could not have been spanned by ten broad men.

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**Who acts:** ten broad men · **What happens:** grow, not span · **To what, where:** trunk

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ten broad men), 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:pg2892:75:21
# text = Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of each could not have been spanned by ten broad men.
1	Mightily	mightily	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
4	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
5	grown	grow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	amod	_	_
6	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	_
8	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	aux:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	trunk	trunk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	12	nmod	_	_
15	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
17	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	aux	_	_
18	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	19	aux:pass	_	_
19	spanned	span	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	acl:relcl	_	_
20	by	by	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
21	ten	ten	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	nummod	_	_
22	broad	broad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	amod	_	_
23	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **span** | could · past · perfect · passive | ten broad men | the trunk of each |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme subject=Co-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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- ↑ back to [Chapter IV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/75/)