---
title: Hard had been their trouble before, but it was child's play to what… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Hard had been their trouble before, but it was child's play to what they met in seeking the comb. Who acts: track, scissors. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Wooing of Olwen, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Wooing of Olwen, sentence 154

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Hard had been their trouble before, but it was child's play to what they met in seeking the comb.

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**Who acts:** track, scissors · **What happens:** be, meet, seek · **To what, where:** trouble, play, comb

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Wooing of Olwen. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (track, scissors), 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:pg7885:17:154
# text = Hard had been their trouble before, but it was child's play to what they met in seeking the comb.
1	Hard	hard	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	cop	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	trouble	trouble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	before	before	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nmod	_	_
16	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	acl:relcl	_	_
18	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
19	seeking	seek	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	17	advcl	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	comb	comb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	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 |  | scissors's trouble but child's play |  |  |  | before, hard *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | past | track | child's play |  |  |  | to scissors's trouble but child's play | tree rules |
| 3 | **meet** | past | scissors |  |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **seek** | gerund | scissors *not said here* | the comb |  |  |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent comb=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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