---
title: Allen was not long when the weakness of death came on him and his ho… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Allen was not long when the weakness of death came on him and his hold failed. Who acts: Allen, weakness, hold, Arden. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Deirdre, 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/pg7885/13/185/)

<!-- 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/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Story of Deirdre](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/13/) / 185

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Story of Deirdre, sentence 185

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Allen was not long when the weakness of death came on him and his hold failed.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Allen, weakness, hold, Arden · **What happens:** not be, come, fail, hold

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Allen, weakness, hold, Arden), 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:pg7885:13:185
# text = Allen was not long when the weakness of death came on him and his hold failed.
1	Allen	Allen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	weakness	weakness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
10	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	hold	hold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	failed	fail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | Allen |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **come** | past | the weakness of death |  |  |  |  | on Arden | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on he=Location |
| 3 | **fail** | past | Arden's hold |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **hold** |  | Arden |  |  |  |  |  | nom hold «act transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 184](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/13/184/)
- next →: [sentence 186](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/13/186/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Deirdre](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/13/)