---
title: She had no power to speak to her husband till he had killed the whale. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: She had no power to speak to her husband till he had killed the whale. Who acts: whale, power. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fair, Brown, and Trembling, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Fair, Brown, and Trembling, sentence 154

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She had no power to speak to her husband till he had killed the whale.

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**Who acts:** whale, power · **What happens:** have, speak, kill · **To what, where:** power, cowboy · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fair, Brown, and Trembling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (whale, power), 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:pg7885:23:154
# text = She had no power to speak to her husband till he had killed the whale.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	husband	husband	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	killed	kill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	advcl	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	whale	whale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | whale | no power |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | no power *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to whale's husband | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to husband=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **kill** | past · perfect · passive |  | cowboy |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Experiencer whale=Result |

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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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