---
title: The place is crawling with them,” said he. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The place is crawling with them,” said he. Who acts: place. 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XVII, sentence 20

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The place is crawling with them,” said he.

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**Who acts:** place · **What happens:** crawl, say · **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 (place), 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:pg2892:88:20
# text = The place is crawling with them,” said he.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	crawling	crawl	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	ccomp	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **crawl** | present · progressive | the place |  |  |  |  | with Mongan | vn swarm-47.5.1-1 «PP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with they=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | place |  |  |  |  |  | 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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- ← previous: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/88/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/88/21/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter XVII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/88/)