---
title: He was not long making a way through the blackthorn. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He was not long making a way through the blackthorn. Who acts: trick. 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 208

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He was not long making a way through the blackthorn.

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**Who acts:** trick · **What happens:** not be, make · **To what, where:** way, blackthorn

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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 (trick), 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:pg7885:31:208
# text = He was not long making a way through the blackthorn.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	making	make	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	through	through	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	blackthorn	blackthorn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | trick |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **make** | gerund | trick *not said here* | a way |  | the blackthorn |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset way=Product |

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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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