---
title: Having many wives was a custom of some old kings; today in most coun… — Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, par… · tree and pragmatics
description: Having many wives was a custom of some old kings; today in most countries a person may be married to only one person. Who acts: Having, old kings. A sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast» of the books course 
---

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# Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast, sentence 21

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Having many wives was a custom of some old kings; today in most countries a person may be married to only one person.

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**Who acts:** Having, old kings · **What happens:** have, be, marry · **To what, where:** many wives, custom, person, most countries

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Having, old kings), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:books:096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson:21
# text = Having many wives was a custom of some old kings; today in most countries a person may be married to only one person.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = books
# lesson = 096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Having	have	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	csubj	_	_
2	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	wives	wife	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	custom	custom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	10	det	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	kings	king	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
12	today	today	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=20:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	15	amod	_	_
15	countries	country	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj:pass	_	_
18	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
19	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	aux:pass	_	_
20	married	marry	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	acl:relcl	_	_
21	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
22	only	only	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	24	nummod	_	_
24	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- hedged: yes
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | gerund |  | many wives |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=Patient |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Having | a custom |  |  |  | of some old kings | tree rules |
| 3 | **marry** | may · passive | some old kings *not said here* | a person |  | most countries | today | to one person | vn amalgamate-22.2-3-1-1 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: subject=Patient to person=Co-Patient |

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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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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:books:096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson:21`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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