---
title: “Why should I want another man’s fish?” said proud Fionn. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why should I want another man’s fish?” said proud Fionn. Who acts: proud Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X, 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/pg2892/23/42/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 42

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“Why should I want another man’s fish?” said proud Fionn.

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**Who acts:** proud Fionn · **What happens:** want, say · **To what, where:** fish · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (proud Fionn), 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:pg2892:23:42
# text = “Why should I want another man’s fish?” said proud Fionn.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	want	want	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
6	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	7	det	_	_
7	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’s	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	proud	proud	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** *in a quote* | should | proud Fionn *= fionn* | another man's fish |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot fish=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | proud Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | 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.

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/41/)
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