---
title: “What is it they are doing?” said he. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What is it they are doing?” said he. Who acts: priest, Mananna’n. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/15/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 15

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“What is it they are doing?” said he.

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**Who acts:** priest, Mananna’n · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (priest, Mananna’n), 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:pg2892:86:15
# text = “What is it they are doing?” said he.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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* | present · progressive | priest |  |  |  |  | do *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Mananna’n *= mananna'n* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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