---
title: There would have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There would have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world seemed just sunshine and a sky. Who acts: world. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 21

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There would have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world seemed just sunshine and a sky.

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**Who acts:** world · **What happens:** be, seem · **To what, where:** sunshine

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (world), 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:pg2892:14:21
# text = There would have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world seemed just sunshine and a sky.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	aux	_	_
4	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
8	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	hours	hour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	lonely	lonely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	sunshine	sunshine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
17	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	_
18	just	just	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	sunshine	sunshine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | would · perfect |  |  |  | there | hour |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **seem** | past | the world | sunshine and a sky |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme sunshine=Attribute |

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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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