---
title: “Why should you be happy?” the astonished king demanded. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why should you be happy?” the astonished king demanded. Who acts: you. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XII, sentence 6

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“Why should you be happy?” the astonished king demanded.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, demand · **To what, where:** astonished king · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg2892:83:6
# text = “Why should you be happy?” the astonished king demanded.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
6	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	astonished	astonished	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	parataxis	_	_
12	demanded	demand	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | should | you |  |  |  |  | happy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **demand** *speech: request* | participle |  | the astonished king *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn require-103-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=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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- ← previous: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/83/5/)
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