---
title: He catches him by the two small ankles and knocks him against the st… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He catches him by the two small ankles and knocks him against the stone that was beside him. Who acts: Thou'rt, that. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/72/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Battle of the Birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/) / 72

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 72

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He catches him by the two small ankles and knocks him against the stone that was beside him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Thou'rt, that · **What happens:** catch, knock, be · **To what, where:** giant, stone

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Thou'rt, that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7885:31:72
# text = He catches him by the two small ankles and knocks him against the stone that was beside him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	catches	catch	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
6	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
7	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	ankles	ankle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	knocks	knock	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	against	against	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | present | Thou'rt | giant |  |  |  | by the two small ankles | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 2 | **knock** | present | Thou'rt *not said here* | giant |  | the stone |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent he=Theme against stone=Destination |
| 3 | **is** | past | that |  |  |  |  | beside Thou'rt | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 71](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/71/)
- next →: [sentence 73](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/73/)
- ↑ back to [The Battle of the Birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/)