---
title: “They had no need of wits,” Tuan said. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “They had no need of wits,” Tuan said. Who acts: wits, Tuan. 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/pg2892/5/27/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 27

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“They had no need of wits,” Tuan said.

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**Who acts:** wits, Tuan · **What happens:** have, say, need · **To what, where:** need, wits · **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 (wits, Tuan), 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:pg2892:5:27
# text = “They had no need of wits,” Tuan said.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	5	det	_	_
5	need	need	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	wits	wit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	Tuan	Tuan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | past | wits *= wit* | no need of wits |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent need=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Tuan |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **need** *in a quote* |  |  | wits |  |  |  |  | nom need «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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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