---
title: Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody was in sight at all. Who acts: Minutes, few travellers, nobody. 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/pg2892/86/2/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 2

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Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody was in sight at all.

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**Who acts:** Minutes, few travellers, nobody · **What happens:** pass, come, go, be · **To what, where:** sight

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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 (Minutes, few travellers, nobody), 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:pg2892:86:2
# text = Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody was in sight at all.
1	Minutes	minute	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	pass	pass	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
5	only	only	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	travellers	traveller	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	minutes	minute	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl:unmarked	_	_
14	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	16	advmod	_	_
15	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
17	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	21	advmod	_	_
18	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	21	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
22	at	at	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	21	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | would | Minutes |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | would | a few travellers |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **go** | would | Minutes *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | past | nobody |  |  | sight |  | at all | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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