---
title: “Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?” Who acts: one, you. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/46/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 46

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“Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?”

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**Who acts:** one, you · **What happens:** tell, venture, think · **To what, where:** chief, us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (one, you), 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:pg2892:21:46
# text = “Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
3	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	chief	chief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
8	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nsubj	_	_
9	ventured	venture	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	14	obj	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive | one *not said here* | chief | us |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient chief=Topic |
| 2 | **venture** | past | one |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |

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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:** «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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