---
title: “Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Cona’n counselled. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Cona’n counselled. Who acts: you, whiskers. 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/pg2892/58/33/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 33

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“Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Cona’n counselled.

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**Who acts:** you, whiskers · **What happens:** let, wear, not wear, counsell · **To what, where:** whiskers

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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, whiskers), 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:pg2892:58:33
# text = “Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Cona’n counselled.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	wear	wear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	whiskers	whisker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	wear	wear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
12	Cona’n	Cona'n	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	counselled	counsell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | whiskers *= whisker* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **wear** *in a quote* | infinitive | whiskers *= whisker* *not said here* | whiskers |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent whisker=Source |
| 3 | **not** **wear** *in a quote* | infinitive | whiskers *= whisker* *not said here* | whiskers *= whisker* |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent they=Source |
| 4 | **counsell** | participle | whiskers *= whisker* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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