---
title: “It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.” Who acts: vast, others, you. 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 21

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“It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.”

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**Who acts:** vast, others, you · **What happens:** not be, say, fight · **To what, where:** sheep · **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 (vast, others, you), 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:pg2892:77:21
# text = “It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	right	right	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	fight	fight	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
16	sheep	sheep	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | present | vast |  |  |  |  | right *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | others *= other* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **fight** *in a quote* | should | you | sheep |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sheep=Co-Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/77/20/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter VI](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/77/)