---
title: “This is a fine growing year,” said he. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “This is a fine growing year,” said he. Who acts: This, Chamberlain. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVII, 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/pg2892/88/17/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XVII, sentence 17

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“This is a fine growing year,” said he.

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**Who acts:** This, Chamberlain · **What happens:** grow, be, say · **To what, where:** fine growing year · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (This, Chamberlain), 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:pg2892:88:17
# text = “This is a fine growing year,” said he.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	This	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	growing	grow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	amod	_	_
7	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** *in a quote* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | This | a fine growing year |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Chamberlain |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/88/16/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter XVII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/88/)