---
title: Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned 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 78

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Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron."

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**What happens:** be, poison, bite · **To what, where:** stroke, mad dog

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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: 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:pg7885:17:78
# text = Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron."
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	bite	bite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	mad	mad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	stroke	stroke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	det	_	_
13	poisoned	poison	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	amod	_	_
14	iron	iron	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | the stroke |  |  |  | like the bite of a mad dog; of this poisoned iron | tree rules |
| 2 | **poison** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **bite** |  |  | a mad dog |  |  |  |  | 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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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