---
title: But Menw caught it and flung it back, piercing Yspathaden's breast w… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But Menw caught it and flung it back, piercing Yspathaden's breast with it, so that it came out at the small of his back. Who acts: Menw, castle. 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 68

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But Menw caught it and flung it back, piercing Yspathaden's breast with it, so that it came out at the small of his back.

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**Who acts:** Menw, castle · **What happens:** catch, fling back, pierce, come out · **To what, where:** castle, breast, small

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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 (Menw, castle), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7885:972`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7885:17:68
# text = But Menw caught it and flung it back, piercing Yspathaden's breast with it, so that it came out at the small of his back.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	Menw	Menw	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	flung	fling	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	back	back	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	piercing	pierce	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
11	Yspathaden	Yspathaden	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	_
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	breast	breast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	so	so	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
18	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	17	fixed	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
21	out	out	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
22	at	at	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	small	small	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
25	of	of	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
27	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nmod	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | past | Menw | castle |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **fling back** | past | Menw *not said here* | castle |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **pierce** | gerund | Menw *not said here* | Yspathaden's breast |  |  |  | with castle | vn poke-19-1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent breast=Patient with it=Instrument |
| 4 | **come out** | past | castle |  |  | the small of Yspathaden's back |  | out *property* | vn become-109.1 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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