---
title: The road was now not so crowded as it had been. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Who acts: road. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 1

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The road was now not so crowded as it had been.

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**Who acts:** road · **What happens:** not be, be

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (road), 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:pg2892:86:1
# text = The road was now not so crowded as it had been.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	crowded	crowded	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | the road |  |  |  | now | crowded *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** | past · perfect | road |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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