---
title: The battle was over before he arrived all but one fight, between a g… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The battle was over before he arrived all but one fight, between a great black raven and a snake. Who acts: battle. 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 19

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The battle was over before he arrived all but one fight, between a great black raven and a snake.

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**Who acts:** battle · **What happens:** be, arrive · **To what, where:** one fight

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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 (battle), 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:pg7885:31:19
# text = The battle was over before he arrived all but one fight, between a great black raven and a snake.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	battle	battle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	over	over	ADV	RB	_	2	acl	_	_
5	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	arrived	arrive	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	all	all	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	fight	fight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	between	between	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
16	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	raven	raven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	snake	snake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the battle *not said here* |  |  |  |  | over *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **arrive** | past | the battle | one fight |  |  |  | between a great black raven and a snake | tree rules |

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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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