---
title: He would have told why a slash was enough for this man and why that… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He would have told why a slash was enough for this man and why that man should be sliced. Who acts: den, slash. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII, sentence 5

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He would have told why a slash was enough for this man and why that man should be sliced.

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**Who acts:** den, slash · **What happens:** tell, be, slice · **To what, where:** man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (den, slash), 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:pg2892:20:5
# text = He would have told why a slash was enough for this man and why that man should be sliced.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	aux	_	_
4	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	slash	slash	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	enough	enough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	det	_	_
12	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
14	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	19	advmod	_	_
15	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	det	_	_
16	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj:pass	_	_
17	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
18	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	aux:pass	_	_
19	sliced	slice	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | would · perfect | den |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | a slash |  |  |  |  | for this man; enough *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **slice** | should · passive |  | that man |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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**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.

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