---
title: “We wish you to be our wife,” he said. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “We wish you to be our wife,” he said. Who acts: We, past. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 72

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“We wish you to be our wife,” he said.

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**Who acts:** We, past · **What happens:** wish, be, say · **To what, where:** you, wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, past), 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:pg2892:40:72
# text = “We wish you to be our wife,” he said.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	cop	_	_
7	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | We |  | you |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot you=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* | our wife |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | past |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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