---
title: "My own daughter's tricks are trying me," said the giant. " — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "My own daughter's tricks are trying me," said the giant. " Who acts: tricks, giant, own daughter. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/198/)

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 198

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"My own daughter's tricks are trying me," said the giant. "

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**Who acts:** tricks, giant, own daughter · **What happens:** try, say, trick · **To what, where:** giant · **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 (tricks, giant, own daughter), 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:pg7885:31:198
# text = "My own daughter's tricks are trying me," said the giant. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	daughter	daughter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	's	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	tricks	trick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
7	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	trying	try	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	ccomp	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	giant	giant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** *in a quote* | present · progressive | My own daughter's tricks | the giant *= giant* |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the giant |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **trick** *in a quote* |  | My own daughter |  |  |  |  |  | nom trick «act transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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