---
title: “And it was you that commenced it,” Cona’n continued. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “And it was you that commenced it,” Cona’n continued. Who acts: eleven hundred, you, Cona’n. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, 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/pg2892/45/4/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“And it was you that commenced it,” Cona’n continued.

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**Who acts:** eleven hundred, you, Cona’n · **What happens:** be, commence, continue · **To what, where:** you, eleven hundred

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eleven hundred, you, Cona’n), 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:pg2892:45:4
# text = “And it was you that commenced it,” Cona’n continued.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	commenced	commence	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	Cona’n	Cona'n	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	continued	continue	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | eleven hundred *= hundred* | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **commence** *in a quote* | past | you | eleven hundred *= hundred* |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
| 3 | **continue** | past | Cona’n |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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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