---
title: There were once a man and a woman who had long in in vain wished for… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: There were once a man and a woman who had long in in vain wished for a child. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Six Swans, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Six Swans, sentence 71

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There were once a man and a woman who had long in in vain wished for a child.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, have, wish

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg11027:19:71
# text = There were once a man and a woman who had long in in vain wished for a child.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	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	5	det	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
11	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	10	advmod	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
14	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
15	wished	wish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	18	amod	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a man and a woman |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | a man and a woman |  |  |  |  | in a vain wished child; long *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **wish** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |

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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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