---
title: But his wife’s voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But his wife’s voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark. Who acts: voice. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 62

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But his wife’s voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark.

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**Who acts:** voice · **What happens:** be, sing · **To what, where:** Fionn, lark

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (voice), 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:pg2892:34:62
# text = But his wife’s voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	sweeter	sweet	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	singing	singing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	lark	lark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Saeve's wife's voice |  | Fionn |  |  | than the singing of a lark; sweet *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **sing** |  |  | a lark |  |  |  |  | nom singing «act 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.

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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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