---
title: We may be sure they were well greeted. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: We may be sure they were well greeted. Who acts: We. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V, 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/pg2892/18/43/)

<!-- 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/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter V](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/18/) / 43

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V, sentence 43

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
We may be sure they were well greeted.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** be, greet · **To what, where:** women

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg2892:18:43
# text = We may be sure they were well greeted.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	cop	_	_
4	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
7	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	8	advmod	_	_
8	greeted	greet	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | may | We |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **greet** *speech: greet* | past · passive |  | women *= woman* |  |  |  | well *property* | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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 42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/18/42/)
- next →: [sentence 44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/18/44/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter V](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/18/)