---
title: Stop a while," says she, "and I will play a trick to the old hero." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Stop a while," says she, "and I will play a trick to the old hero." Who acts: you, I. 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 184

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Stop a while," says she, "and I will play a trick to the old hero."

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** stop, say, play · **To what, where:** filly, trick · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, I), 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:pg7885:31:184
# text = Stop a while," says she, "and I will play a trick to the old hero."
1	Stop	stop	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	while	while	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
6	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
7	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	hero	hero	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stop** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  | while |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present |  | filly |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **play** | future | I | a trick |  |  |  | to the old hero | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trick=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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