---
title: A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating. Who acts: scarce summer, they, new potatoes. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Comrades, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/18/2/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [Jack and His Comrades](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/18/) / 2

# Celtic Fairy Tales, Jack and His Comrades, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** scarce summer, they, new potatoes · **What happens:** come, not know, live, be, eat · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Comrades. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (scarce summer, they, new potatoes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7885:18:2
# text = A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	scarce	scarce	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	summer	summer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
12	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	15	advmod	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	'd	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
16	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	new	new	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	potatoes	potato	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	nsubj	_	_
20	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
21	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	cop	_	_
22	fit	fit	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	advcl	_	_
23	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
24	eating	eat	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	22	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a scarce summer |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **know** | past · do-support | they |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **live** | would | they |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | would | the new potatoes |  |  |  |  | fit *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **eat** | gerund | the new potatoes *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/18/1/)
- next →: [sentence 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/18/3/)
- ↑ back to [Jack and His Comrades](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/18/)