---
title: Whatever was thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Whatever was thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation. Who acts: king, utterance. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, 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/pg2892/21/30/)

<!-- 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 VIII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/) / 30

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 30

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Whatever was thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** king, utterance · **What happens:** think, say, be · **To what, where:** utterance · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, utterance), 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:pg2892:21:30
# text = Whatever was thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation.
1	Whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	advcl	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	1	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	acl:relcl	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	direct	direct	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	utterance	utterance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
14	as	as	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	observation	observation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past · passive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V» |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  | utterance |  | direct *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **is** | past | utterance |  |  |  |  | as observation | tree rules |

<!-- .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 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/29/)
- next →: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/31/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter VIII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/)