---
title: “I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man. Who acts: young man. 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/pg2892/65/20/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 20

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“I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man.

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**Who acts:** young man · **What happens:** have, go, greet, say · **To what, where:** father · **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 (young man), 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:pg2892:65:20
# text = “I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
4	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	xcomp	_	_
5	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	greet	greet	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	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 | the young man *= man* |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **go** *in a quote* | infinitive | the young man *= man* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **greet** *speech: greet* *in a quote* | to-infinitive | the young man *= man* *not said here* |  | my father |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent father=Theme |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the young man |  |  |  |  |  | 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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