---
title: “You must ask what he wants.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “You must ask what he wants.” Who acts: You, Mongan. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XI, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XI, sentence 29

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“You must ask what he wants.”

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**Who acts:** You, Mongan · **What happens:** ask, want · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XI. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, Mongan), 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:pg2892:82:29
# text = “You must ask what he wants.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	wants	want	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | must | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **want** *in a quote* | present | Mongan |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |

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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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