---
title: Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had no children; a… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had no children; and this they lamented very much. Who acts: queen, this. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Briar Rose, 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/pg11027/18/1/)

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, Briar Rose, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had no children; and this they lamented very much.

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**Who acts:** queen, this · **What happens:** live, have, lament · **To what, where:** king, children

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Briar Rose. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (queen, this), 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:pg11027:18:1
# text = Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had no children; and this they lamented very much.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	6	advmod	_	_
2	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
6	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	queen	queen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	12	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
13	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	14	det	_	_
14	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	19	nsubj	_	_
18	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	lamented	lament	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
20	very	very	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	much	much	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a king and queen |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme king=Location |
| 2 | **have** | past | queen | no children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 3 | **lament** | past | this |  |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer |

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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:** «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.

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