---
title: “Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.” Who acts: me, your. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII, sentence 10

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“Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.”

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**Who acts:** me, your · **What happens:** cry, tell · **To what, where:** Fionn, anguish, tale, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (me, your), 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:pg2892:39:10
# text = “Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	anguish	anguish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	iobj	_	_
14	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	tale	tale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | me | Fionn |  | anguish |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive |  | your tale | me |  |  | my son *vocative* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient tale=Topic |
| 3 | **tell** *in a quote* |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom tale «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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