---
title: “Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him. Who acts: Praise, 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 40

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“Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him.

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**Who acts:** Praise, man · **What happens:** be, say · **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 (Praise, 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:pg2892:78:40
# text = “Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Praise	praise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	gods	god	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	above	above	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | infinitive | Praise |  |  |  |  | to the gods | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **is** | past | the man |  |  |  |  | above Praise | tree rules |

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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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