---
title: “One could not call them handsome,” said Cona’n. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “One could not call them handsome,” said Cona’n. Who acts: One, Cona’n. 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/pg2892/58/26/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 26

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“One could not call them handsome,” said Cona’n.

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**Who acts:** One, Cona’n · **What happens:** not call, say · **To what, where:** daughters · **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 (One, Cona’n), 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:pg2892:58:26
# text = “One could not call them handsome,” said Cona’n.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	One	one	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	call	call	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	handsome	handsome	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Cona’n	Cona'n	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **call** *in a quote* | could | One | daughters *= daughter* |  |  |  | handsome *property* | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Cona’n |  |  |  |  |  | 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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- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/58/25/)
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