---
title: “What sort of a lie was the lie, master?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What sort of a lie was the lie, master?” Who acts: sort. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/60/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter X](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/) / 60

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 60

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“What sort of a lie was the lie, master?”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sort · **What happens:** be, sort · **To what, where:** lie

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (sort), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2892:23:60
# text = “What sort of a lie was the lie, master?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
3	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | what sort of a lie | the lie and master |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sort** *in a quote* |  |  | a lie |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 59](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/59/)
- next →: [sentence 61](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/61/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter X](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/23/)