---
title: “How goes it, mac an Da’v?” said the king. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “How goes it, mac an Da’v?” said the king. Who acts: king. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XVIII, sentence 11

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“How goes it, mac an Da’v?” said the king.

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** go, mac, say · **To what, where:** palm · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XVIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king), 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:pg2892:89:11
# text = “How goes it, mac an Da’v?” said the king.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	goes	go	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	mac	mac	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Da’v	Da'v	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | present |  | palm |  |  |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=Theme |
| 2 | **mac** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | 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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