---
title: There was a man in Ireland once who was called Malcolm Harper. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a man in Ireland once who was called Malcolm Harper. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Deirdre, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Story of Deirdre, sentence 1

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There was a man in Ireland once who was called Malcolm Harper.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, call · **To what, where:** man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Deirdre. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7885:13:1
# text = There was a man in Ireland once who was called Malcolm Harper.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	Ireland	Ireland	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
7	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	10	advmod	_	_
8	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	acl	_	_
11	Malcolm	Malcolm	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Harper	Harper	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a man in Ireland |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | past · passive |  | a man in Ireland |  |  |  | once *property* | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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