---
title: “But we never eat together,” the queen replied. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “But we never eat together,” the queen replied. Who acts: we. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VI, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VI, sentence 11

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“But we never eat together,” the queen replied.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** not eat, reply · **To what, where:** queen · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VI. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg2892:67:11
# text = “But we never eat together,” the queen replied.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	eat	eat	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	together	together	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	queen	queen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
11	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **eat** *in a quote* | present | we | the queen |  |  |  | together *property* | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent queen=Patient |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle |  | the queen *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/67/10/)
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