---
title: One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace. Who acts: Mongan. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IX, sentence 1

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One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace.

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**Who acts:** Mongan · **What happens:** play · **To what, where:** chess, palace

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mongan), 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:pg2892:80:1
# text = One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	Mongan	Mongan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	Duv	Duv	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
6	Laca	Laca	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	flat	_	_
7	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	playing	play	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
9	chess	chess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | past · progressive | Mongan and Duv | chess |  | Mongan's palace | day |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent chess=Theme |

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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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