---
title: And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's h… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's head with. Who acts: man, you. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Coffey, 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/pg7885/27/31/)

<!-- 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/) / [Andrew Coffey](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/27/) / 31

# Celtic Fairy Tales, Andrew Coffey, sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's head with.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man, you · **What happens:** carry, wish, crack · **To what, where:** blackthorn, head

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Coffey. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, you), 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:pg7885:27:31
# text = And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's head with.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	carried	carry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	as	as	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	blackthorn	blackthorn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'd	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	wish	wish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	crack	crack	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	's	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **carry** | past | man | a blackthorn |  |  |  | fine *property* | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blackthorn=Theme |
| 2 | **wish** | would | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **crack** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | a man's head |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location head=Theme |

<!-- .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 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/27/30/)
- next →: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/27/32/)
- ↑ back to [Andrew Coffey](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/27/)