---
title: I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. Who acts: I. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 19

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I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** man, fish

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg2892:9:19
# text = I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	stag	stag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	boar	boar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
17	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	21	advmod	_	_
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past · perfect | I | a man and a stag and a boar and a bird and a fish |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | past | I | a fish |  |  | now |  | 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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