---
title: “Questions are not answered thus,” they said. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Questions are not answered thus,” they said. Who acts: Questions. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII, sentence 31

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“Questions are not answered thus,” they said.

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**Who acts:** Questions · **What happens:** not answer, say · **To what, where:** Questions · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Questions), 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:pg2892:68:31
# text = “Questions are not answered thus,” they said.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Questions	question	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	ccomp	_	_
6	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **answer** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present · passive |  | Questions |  |  |  | thus *property* | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: subject=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Questions *= question* |  |  |  |  |  | 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 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/68/30/)
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