---
title: Ach!" said the old man, "I have not much to spare." " — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Ach!" said the old man, "I have not much to spare." " Who acts: Ach. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden, 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/pg7885/21/4/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Sea-maiden](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/) / 4

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Sea-maiden, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Ach!" said the old man, "I have not much to spare." "

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Ach · **What happens:** say, spare · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Ach), 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:pg7885:21:4
# text = Ach!" said the old man, "I have not much to spare." "
1	Ach	Ach	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | Ach |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **spare** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: 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 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/3/)
- next →: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/5/)
- ↑ back to [The Sea-maiden](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/)