---
title: Why a flail to be sure), and he knocked off one grain. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Why a flail to be sure), and he knocked off one grain. Who acts: flail, 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 9

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Why a flail to be sure), and he knocked off one grain.

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**Who acts:** flail, wren · **What happens:** be, knock off · **To what, where:** one grain

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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 (flail, 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:pg7885:31:9
# text = Why a flail to be sure), and he knocked off one grain.
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	flail	flail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
6	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	knocked	knock	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
12	off	off	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
13	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	grain	grain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | to-infinitive | a flail |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **knock off** | past | wren | one grain |  |  |  |  | vn steal-10.5 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grain=Theme |

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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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