---
title: “It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted. Who acts: lie, Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X, 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/pg2892/23/59/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 59

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“It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted.

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**Who acts:** lie, Fionn · **What happens:** not be, do, admit · **To what, where:** good thing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lie, Fionn), 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:pg2892:23:59
# text = “It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
12	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	admitted	admit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** *in a quote* | present | lie | a good thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **do** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | Fionn *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **admit** *speech: other* | past | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn confess-37.10 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent |

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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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