---
title: There was once a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth a… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat and span. Who acts: poor peasant, wife. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/76/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Grimm's Fairy Stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/) / [The Water of Life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/) / 76

# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Water of Life, sentence 76

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was once a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat and span.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** poor peasant, wife · **What happens:** be, sit, poke · **To what, where:** fire

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor peasant, wife), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg11027:17:76
# text = There was once a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat and span.
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	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	peasant	peasant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	by	by	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	hearth	hearth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	poked	poke	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
21	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	22	nmod:poss	_	_
22	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
23	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	span	span	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a poor peasant |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | past | a poor peasant |  |  |  | evening | by the hearth | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by hearth=Location |
| 3 | **poke** | past | a poor peasant *not said here* | the fire |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent fire=Theme |
| 4 | **sit** | past | peasant's wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 11027 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 75](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/75/)
- next →: [sentence 77](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/77/)
- ↑ back to [The Water of Life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/)