---
title: The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da’v marvelled at… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da’v marvelled at that. Who acts: priests. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/14/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 14

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The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da’v marvelled at that.

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**Who acts:** priests · **What happens:** read, mac, marvell · **To what, where:** offices, Da’v, that

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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 (priests), 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:pg2892:86:14
# text = The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da’v marvelled at that.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	priests	priest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	reading	read	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	offices	office	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	mac	mac	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
10	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Da’v	Da'v	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	marvelled	marvell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	xcomp	_	_
13	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **read** | past · progressive | the priests | men's offices |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent office=Topic |
| 2 | **mac** | infinitive | the priests *not said here* | a Da’v |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **marvell** | participle | the priests *not said here* |  |  | that |  |  | tree rules |

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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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