---
title: What's the matter?" cried they. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: What's the matter?" cried they. Who acts: matter. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'neary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'neary, sentence 67

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What's the matter?" cried they.

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**Who acts:** matter · **What happens:** be, cry

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'neary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (matter), 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:pg7885:10:67
# text = What's the matter?" cried they.
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj:outer	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
7	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | the matter |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* *in a quote* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: 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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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