---
title: There was such a throng before the church that Trembling could only… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was such a throng before the church that Trembling could only come inside the gate. Who acts: throng, Trembling. 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 66

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There was such a throng before the church that Trembling could only come inside the gate.

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**Who acts:** throng, Trembling · **What happens:** be, come · **To what, where:** church, gate

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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 (throng, Trembling), 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:pg7885:23:66
# text = There was such a throng before the church that Trembling could only come inside the gate.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	5	det:predet	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	throng	throng	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	before	before	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	church	church	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
9	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	Trembling	Trembling	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	_
14	inside	inside	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	gate	gate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | such throng |  |  | the church; there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before church=Location |
| 2 | **come** | could | Trembling | the church *not said here* |  | the gate |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location church=Theme |

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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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