---
title: “I have come to ask for the loan of your son.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I have come to ask for the loan of your son.” Who acts: birds. 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 20

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“I have come to ask for the loan of your son.”

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**Who acts:** birds · **What happens:** come, ask, loan · **To what, where:** son

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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 (birds), 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:pg2892:67:20
# text = “I have come to ask for the loan of your son.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	come	come	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	loan	loan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** *in a quote* | present · perfect | the birds *= bird* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | to-infinitive | the birds *= bird* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for the loan of your son | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **loan** *in a quote* |  |  | your son |  |  |  |  | nom loan «possession 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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