---
title: “Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk. Who acts: you, clerk. 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/pg2892/86/37/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 37

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“Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk.

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**Who acts:** you, clerk · **What happens:** put, say · **To what, where:** toe, bridge · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, clerk), 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:pg2892:86:37
# text = “Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	put	put	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	toe	toe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	bridge	bridge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	clerk	clerk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put** *in a quote* | would | you | a toe |  | that bridge |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V PP.destination NP»: agent=Agent toe=Theme on bridge=Destination |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the clerk |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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