---
title: There was at that time a king over every fifth of Erin. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was at that time a king over every fifth of Erin. Who acts: king. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Conall Yellowclaw, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Conall Yellowclaw, sentence 2

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There was at that time a king over every fifth of Erin.

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** fifth

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Conall Yellowclaw. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king), 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:pg7885:9:2
# text = There was at that time a king over every fifth of Erin.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
8	over	over	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	10	det	_	_
10	fifth	fifth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	Erin	Erin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a king |  |  | every fifth of Erin; there | time |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over fifth=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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