---
title: “What for?” said the King of Leinster. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What for?” said the King of Leinster. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVI. They met him near the place where the games were played, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XVI. They met him near the place where the games were played, sentence 4

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“What for?” said the King of Leinster.

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**What happens:** say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVI. They met him near the place where the games were played. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg2892:87:4
# text = “What for?” said the King of Leinster.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj:outer	_	_
3	for	for	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	ccomp	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	Leinster	Leinster	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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