---
title: “Tell me the why of this?” said his servant. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Tell me the why of this?” said his servant. Who acts: servant. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/84/31/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter XIII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/84/) / 31

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XIII, sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Tell me the why of this?” said his servant.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** servant · **What happens:** tell, say · **To what, where:** servant · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servant), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2892:84:31
# text = “Tell me the why of this?” said his servant.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	2	advmod	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  | sorrier's servant *= servant* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | sorrier's servant |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/84/30/)
- next →: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/84/32/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter XIII](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/84/)