---
title: “Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep that engagement?” Who acts: dear heart, you. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, 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/pg2892/43/12/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 12

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“Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep that engagement?”

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**Who acts:** dear heart, you · **What happens:** say, decide, not keep · **To what, where:** king, engagement · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dear heart, 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:pg2892:43:12
# text = “Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep that engagement?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	9	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	decided	decide	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	ccomp	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
20	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	21	det	_	_
21	engagement	engagement	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | my dear heart | the king |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **decide** *in a quote* | present · perfect | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **keep** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | that engagement |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent engagement=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 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/43/11/)
- next →: [sentence 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/43/13/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter IV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/43/)