---
title: What did they see coming but three men a-journeying. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: What did they see coming but three men a-journeying. Who acts: Deirdre, three men. 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 81

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What did they see coming but three men a-journeying.

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**Who acts:** Deirdre, three men · **What happens:** see, come, journey

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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 (Deirdre, three men), 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:pg7885:13:81
# text = What did they see coming but three men a-journeying.
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	see	see	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	journeying	journey	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past · do-support | Deirdre |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **come** | gerund | Deirdre *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **journey** | gerund | three men *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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