---
title: The Irishman answered that he could never go these nine hundred mile… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Irishman answered that he could never go these nine hundred miles, for his horse was giving in already. Who acts: Irishman, horse. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/108/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Blue Mountains](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/) / 108

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Mountains, sentence 108

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The Irishman answered that he could never go these nine hundred miles, for his horse was giving in already.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Irishman, horse · **What happens:** answer, not go, give · **To what, where:** hundred miles · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Irishman, horse), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:45:108
# text = The Irishman answered that he could never go these nine hundred miles, for his horse was giving in already.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Irishman	Irishman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	12	det	_	_
10	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	compound	_	_
11	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	miles	mile	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	giving	give	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	already	already	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the Irishman |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **go** | could | Irishman | this hundred miles |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **give** | past · progressive | Irishman's horse |  |  |  |  |  | vn break\_down-45.8 «NP V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 107](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/107/)
- next →: [sentence 109](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/109/)
- ↑ back to [The Blue Mountains](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/)