---
title: There was not a blade of grass growing from root, nor a bird singing… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was not a blade of grass growing from root, nor a bird singing in the wood, nor a star shining from heaven but Deirdre had a name for it. Who acts: blade, grass, bird, star. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Deirdre, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics o
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Story of Deirdre, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was not a blade of grass growing from root, nor a bird singing in the wood, nor a star shining from heaven but Deirdre had a name for it.

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**Who acts:** blade, grass, bird, star, Deirdre · **What happens:** not be, grow, sing, shine, have · **To what, where:** wood, heaven, name

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Deirdre. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (blade, grass, bird, star), 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:pg7885:13:26
# text = There was not a blade of grass growing from root, nor a bird singing in the wood, nor a star shining from heaven but Deirdre had a name for it.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	blade	blade	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	growing	grow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	acl	_	_
9	from	from	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	root	root	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	14	cc	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
15	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	14	acl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	22	cc	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	star	star	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
23	shining	shine	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	22	acl	_	_
24	from	from	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	heaven	heaven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl	_	_
26	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	28	cc	_	_
27	Deirdre	Deirdre	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	28	nsubj	_	_
28	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	conj	_	_
29	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	30	det	_	_
30	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	obj	_	_
31	for	for	ADP	IN	_	32	case	_	_
32	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	30	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
33	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **be** | past | a blade of grass |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **grow** | gerund | grass *not said here* |  |  |  |  | from root | vn grow-26.2.1 «NP.product V PP.patient»: agent=Product from root=Patient |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | a bird *not said here* |  |  | the wood |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in wood=Location |
| 4 | **shine** | gerund | a star *not said here* |  |  | heaven |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **have** | past | Deirdre | a name |  |  |  | for star | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent name=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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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