---
title: "What scoundrel struck that blow?" asked the king of Erin. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "What scoundrel struck that blow?" asked the king of Erin. Who acts: scoundrel, king. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire, sentence 86

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"What scoundrel struck that blow?" asked the king of Erin.

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**Who acts:** scoundrel, king · **What happens:** strike, ask · **To what, where:** blow · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (scoundrel, king), 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:pg7885:19:86
# text = "What scoundrel struck that blow?" asked the king of Erin.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
3	scoundrel	scoundrel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	struck	strike	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	det	_	_
6	blow	blow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	Erin	Erin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **strike** *in a quote* | past | scoundrel | that blow |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP ADJP»: agent=Agent what=Patient blow=Result |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the king of Erin |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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