---
title: The man said: "They're not ours." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The man said: "They're not ours." Who acts: man. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Brewery of Eggshells, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Brewery of Eggshells, sentence 8

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The man said: "They're not ours."

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** say, not be · **To what, where:** ours · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Brewery of Eggshells. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7885:32:8
# text = The man said: "They're not ours."
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	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	:	_	9	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	're	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	ours	our	PRON	PRP	Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	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 man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **is a** *in a quote* | present | man | ours |  |  |  |  | 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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