---
title: Soon after this it chanced that the poor widow sent her children to… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Soon after this it chanced that the poor widow sent her children to the town to purchase cotton, needles, ribbon, and tape. Who acts: word, poor widow. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Snow-white and Rose-red, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, Snow-white and Rose-red, sentence 84

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Soon after this it chanced that the poor widow sent her children to the town to purchase cotton, needles, ribbon, and tape.

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**Who acts:** word, poor widow · **What happens:** chance, send, purchase · **To what, where:** tape, children, town, cotton

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Snow-white and Rose-red. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (word, poor widow), 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:pg11027:23:84
# text = Soon after this it chanced that the poor widow sent her children to the town to purchase cotton, needles, ribbon, and tape.
1	Soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
2	after	after	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obl	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	chanced	chance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	widow	widow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	sent	send	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
11	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	purchase	purchase	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	_
18	cotton	cotton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
20	needles	needle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
22	ribbon	ribbon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	tape	tape	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **chance** | past | word | tape |  |  | after this | soon *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **send** | past | the poor widow | grasshopper's children |  | the town |  |  | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent child=Theme to town=Destination |
| 3 | **purchase** | to-infinitive | the poor widow *not said here* | cotton and needles and ribbon |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset cotton=Theme |

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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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