---
title: “Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death o… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on the dead meat.” Who acts: you, dog. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn, sentence 43

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“Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on the dead meat.”

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**Who acts:** you, dog · **What happens:** not move, choke · **To what, where:** hand, man, dead meat

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, dog), 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:pg2892:78:43
# text = “Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on the dead meat.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	move	move	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	foot	foot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
10	until	until	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	chokes	choke	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
14	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obj	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	on	on	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	meat	meat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **move** *in a quote* | imperative · do-support | you *not said here* | a hand or a foot |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent hand=Theme |
| 2 | **choke** *in a quote* | present | the dog | man |  | the dead meat |  | to death *result* | vn suffocate-40.7 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent himself=Patient to death=Result |

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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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