---
title: "Why don't you come to breakfast, my dear?" said she. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why don't you come to breakfast, my dear?" said she. Who acts: you, wife. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story-teller At Fault, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/8/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Story-teller At Fault](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/) / 8

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Story-teller At Fault, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Why don't you come to breakfast, my dear?" said she.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, wife · **What happens:** not come, say · **To what, where:** breakfast · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story-teller At Fault. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, wife), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7885:20:8
# text = "Why don't you come to breakfast, my dear?" said she.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	breakfast	breakfast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **come** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you |  |  | breakfast |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to breakfast=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/7/)
- next →: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/9/)
- ↑ back to [The Story-teller At Fault](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/)