---
title: "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly," says he, "the hard iron pains… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly," says he, "the hard iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech. Who acts: Menw, hard iron. 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 69

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"A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly," says he, "the hard iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech.

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**Who acts:** Menw, hard iron · **What happens:** curse, say, pain, bite · **To what, where:** Menw, horse leech · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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, hard iron), 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:pg7885:973`): 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:pg7885:17:69
# text = "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly," says he, "the hard iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	cursed	curse	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	amod	_	_
4	ungentle	ungentle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	_
9	law	law	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	truly	truly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
15	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	iron	iron	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
21	pains	pain	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
22	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	_
23	like	like	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	bite	bite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
26	of	of	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
27	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	30	det	_	_
28	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	compound	_	_
29	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	28	punct	_	_
30	leech	leech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nmod	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	21	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **curse** *in a quote* | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | Menw |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **pain** *in a quote* | present | the hard iron | Menw |  |  |  | like the bite of a horse leech | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus i=Experiencer |
| 4 | **bite** *in a quote* |  |  | a horse leech |  |  |  |  | nom bite «state transitive»: of=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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