---
title: The lad said, "I must know what it is." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The lad said, "I must know what it is." Who acts: lad. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Sea-maiden, sentence 12

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The lad said, "I must know what it is."

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**Who acts:** lad · **What happens:** say, know, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lad), 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:pg7885:21:12
# text = The lad said, "I must know what it is."
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	ccomp	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the lad |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **know** *in a quote* | must | the lad *= lad* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | lad |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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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