---
title: There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Who acts: person. A sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 54

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There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery.

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**Who acts:** person · **What happens:** be, call, rule · **To what, where:** person, nursery · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (person), 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:pg11757:1:54
# text = There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery.
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	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	acl	_	_
6	Nana	Nana	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	xcomp	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	ruled	rule	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	nursery	nursery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	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 person |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | participle |  | a person *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **rule** | past | a person | the nursery |  |  |  |  | vn dub-29.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nursery=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:** «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Project Gutenberg book 11757 (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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