---
title: “Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his he… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,” said Fionn. Who acts: wife loser, Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V, 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/pg2892/32/7/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V, sentence 7

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“Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,” said Fionn.

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**Who acts:** wife loser, Fionn · **What happens:** tell, have, say · **To what, where:** wife loser, girl, head · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife loser, 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:pg2892:32:7
# text = “Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,” said Fionn.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	ccomp	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	loser	loser	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
7	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl:relcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	conj	_	_
17	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
21	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
22	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	21	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive |  | the wife loser |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent loser=Recipient |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | future | the wife loser | the girl |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent girl=Patient |
| 3 | **have** *in a quote* | future | Fionn | demand's head |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | 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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