---
title: But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped. Who acts: wife. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden, 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/pg7885/21/148/)

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Sea-maiden, sentence 148

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But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped.

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**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** see, stop · **To what, where:** sea maiden

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife), 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:pg7885:21:148
# text = But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	maiden	maiden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
10	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | the wife | the sea maiden |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer maiden=Stimulus |
| 2 | **stop** | past | wife | the sea maiden *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector maiden=Eventuality |

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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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