---
title: “The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest m… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest music in the world.” Who acts: music, great Fionn, that. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/47/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 47

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“The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest music in the world.”

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**Who acts:** music, great Fionn, that · **What happens:** happen, say, be · **To what, where:** finest music, world · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (music, great Fionn, that), 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:pg2892:21:47
# text = “The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest music in the world.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	music	music	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	_
4	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
6	happens	happen	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
13	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	18	nsubj	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	finest	fine	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	18	amod	_	_
18	music	music	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** *in a quote* | present | the music |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | great Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | that | the finest music |  | the world |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

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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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