---
title: “Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man. Who acts: dog, man. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn, sentence 26

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“Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man.

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**Who acts:** dog, man · **What happens:** not climb, say · **To what, where:** tree · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. “It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dog, 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:pg2892:78:26
# text = “Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
3	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
4	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	advcl	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	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	14	det	_	_
14	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **climb** *in a quote* | can | that dog | a tree |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location tree=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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