---
title: Early in the morning the king's son went where the tree was, and tha… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Early in the morning the king's son went where the tree was, and that tree was not hard to hit upon. Who acts: son, tree. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 142

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Early in the morning the king's son went where the tree was, and that tree was not hard to hit upon.

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**Who acts:** son, tree · **What happens:** go, be, not be, hit

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son, tree), 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:pg7885:31:142
# text = Early in the morning the king's son went where the tree was, and that tree was not hard to hit upon.
1	Early	early	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
2	in	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	13	advmod	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
16	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	17	det	_	_
17	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
18	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
19	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	20	advmod	_	_
20	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	conj	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	hit	hit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	xcomp	_	_
23	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | the king's son |  |  |  | morning | early *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **be** | past | the tree |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **is** | past | that tree |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **hit** | to-infinitive | that tree *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=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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