---
title: A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word t… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells a tale.” Who acts: stone, word. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V, sentence 40

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A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells a tale.”

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**Who acts:** stone, word · **What happens:** make, tell · **To what, where:** house, tale · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stone, word), 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:pg2892:44:40
# text = A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells a tale.”
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
19	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	tale	tale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | present | a stone on a stone | a house and dear heart |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset house=Product |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | a word on a word | a tale |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent tale=Recipient |

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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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