---
title: There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breath… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out. Who acts: troops, young women, breaths, skull. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIV, 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/pg2892/85/9/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XIV, sentence 9

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There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out.

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**Who acts:** troops, young women, breaths, skull · **What happens:** be, giggle, last, beam, give out

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (troops, young women, breaths, skull), 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:pg2892:85:9
# text = There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	troops	troops	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	2	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	giggled	giggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	as	as	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	8	advmod	_	_
11	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	breaths	breath	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
14	lasted	last	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	beamed	beam	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
17	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	19	advmod	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	conj	_	_
20	out	out	ADP	RP	_	19	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | troops of young women |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **giggle** | past | young women |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **last** | past | troops's breaths |  |  |  |  |  | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **beam** | past | troops's breaths *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **give out** | past | skull |  |  |  |  |  | vn break\_down-45.8 «NP V»: agent=Patient |

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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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