---
title: "He would beat the dogs and the cats when they would be coming near… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "He would beat the dogs and the cats when they would be coming near the king's bottles and glasses." Who acts: giant, dogs. 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 78

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"He would beat the dogs and the cats when they would be coming near the king's bottles and glasses."

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**Who acts:** giant, dogs · **What happens:** beat, come · **To what, where:** dogs, bottles

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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 (giant, dogs), 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:pg7885:31:78
# text = "He would beat the dogs and the cats when they would be coming near the king's bottles and glasses."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux	_	_
14	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
15	near	near	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	's	's	PART	POS	_	17	case	_	_
19	bottles	bottle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	glasses	glass	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beat** *in a quote* | would | giant | the dogs and the cats |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location dog=Theme |
| 2 | **come** *in a quote* | would · progressive | dogs *= dog* |  |  | the king's bottles and glasses |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme near bottle=Location |

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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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