---
title: “We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian. Who acts: We, Finnian. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, 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/pg2892/2/6/)

<!-- 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 I](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/) / 6

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** We, Finnian · **What happens:** try, say · **To what, where:** power · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, Finnian), 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:pg2892:2:6
# text = “We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	det	_	_
6	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’s	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Finnian	Finnian	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** *in a quote* | shall | We | this person's power |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent power=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Finnian |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/5/)
- next →: [sentence 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/7/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter I](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/)