---
title: “I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must be paid.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must be paid.” Who acts: Fiacuil. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIII, 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/pg2892/26/38/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XIII, sentence 38

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must be paid.”

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**Who acts:** Fiacuil · **What happens:** help, reply, pay · **To what, where:** Fiacuil · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fiacuil), 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:pg2892:26:38
# text = “I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must be paid.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	Fiacuil	Fiacuil	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	aux:pass	_	_
15	paid	pay	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **help** *in a quote* | can | Fiacuil |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | Fiacuil |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **pay** *in a quote* | must · passive |  | Fiacuil |  |  |  |  | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Asset |

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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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