---
title: They did so, and if they played, the lank grey beggarman listened. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They did so, and if they played, the lank grey beggarman listened. Who acts: fifths, lank grey beggarman. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story-teller At Fault, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/131/)

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Story-teller At Fault, sentence 131

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They did so, and if they played, the lank grey beggarman listened.

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**Who acts:** fifths, lank grey beggarman · **What happens:** do, play, listen

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story-teller At Fault. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fifths, lank grey beggarman), 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:pg7885:20:131
# text = They did so, and if they played, the lank grey beggarman listened.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	played	play	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	lank	lank	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	beggarman	beggarman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | past | fifths *= fifth* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **play** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | fifths *= fifth* |  |  |  |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **listen** | past | the lank grey beggarman |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: 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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