---
title: “They are sick indeed,” said mac an Da’v pityingly. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “They are sick indeed,” said mac an Da’v pityingly. Who acts: animals. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIX, 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/pg2892/90/29/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XIX, sentence 29

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“They are sick indeed,” said mac an Da’v pityingly.

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**Who acts:** animals · **What happens:** be, say, mac · **To what, where:** Da’v · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (animals), 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:pg2892:90:29
# text = “They are sick indeed,” said mac an Da’v pityingly.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	sick	sick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	ccomp	_	_
5	indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	mac	mac	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
10	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Da’v	Da'v	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	pityingly	pityingly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	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 | animals *= animal* |  |  |  |  | indeed, sick *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **mac** | infinitive |  | a Da’v |  |  |  | pityingly *property* | tree rules |

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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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