---
title: The wren threshed (what did he thresh with? — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The wren threshed (what did he thresh with? Who acts: wren. 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 8

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The wren threshed (what did he thresh with?

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**Who acts:** wren · **What happens:** thresh

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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 (wren), 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:pg7885:31:8
# text = The wren threshed (what did he thresh with?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	wren	wren	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	threshed	thresh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	thresh	thresh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **thresh** | past | the wren |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **thresh** | past · do-support | wren |  |  |  |  |  | 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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