---
title: Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess. Who acts: friend. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX, 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/pg2892/80/19/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IX, sentence 19

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Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess.

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**Who acts:** friend · **What happens:** feel, play · **To what, where:** chess

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friend), 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:pg2892:80:19
# text = Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
2	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	5	amod	_	_
5	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	felt	feel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	secure	secure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	liberty	liberty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl	_	_
14	chess	chess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feel** | past | friend |  |  |  | then; time | secure *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **play** | to-infinitive | friend *not said here* | chess |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent chess=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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