---
title: “Ah me!” cried Becfola, “why did you fight that fight?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Ah me!” cried Becfola, “why did you fight that fight?” Who acts: me, you. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III, 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/pg2892/42/29/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 29

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“Ah me!” cried Becfola, “why did you fight that fight?”

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**Who acts:** me, you · **What happens:** cry, fight · **To what, where:** Becfola, fight · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (me, you), 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:pg2892:42:29
# text = “Ah me!” cried Becfola, “why did you fight that fight?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	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	Becfola	Becfola	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
11	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	fight	fight	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
14	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	det	_	_
15	fight	fight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	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 | Becfola |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent becfola=Topic |
| 2 | **fight** *in a quote* | past · do-support | you | that fight |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fight=Co-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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- ← previous: [sentence 28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/42/28/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter III](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/42/)