---
title: “Why would you not speak to me or look at me?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why would you not speak to me or look at me?” Who acts: 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/pg2892/42/32/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 32

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“Why would you not speak to me or look at me?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** not speak, look · **To what, where:** interest · **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 (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:pg2892:42:32
# text = “Why would you not speak to me or look at me?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	look	look	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | would | you |  | interest |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to i=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **look** *in a quote* | infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at interest | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at i=Theme |

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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 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/42/31/)
- next →: [sentence 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/42/33/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter III](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/42/)