---
title: “Nobody could say you were,” agreed Mongan. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Nobody could say you were,” agreed Mongan. Who acts: Nobody, you, Mongan. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XX, 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/pg2892/91/20/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XX, sentence 20

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“Nobody could say you were,” agreed Mongan.

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**Who acts:** Nobody, you, Mongan · **What happens:** say, be, agree · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nobody, you, Mongan), 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:pg2892:91:20
# text = “Nobody could say you were,” agreed Mongan.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	4	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	agreed	agree	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Mongan	Mongan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | could | Nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* | past | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **agree** *speech: agree* | past | Mongan |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «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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- ← previous: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/91/19/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter XX](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/91/)