---
title: There was a farmer, and he had three cows, fine fat beauties they we… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a farmer, and he had three cows, fine fat beauties they were. Who acts: farmer. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, 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/pg14241/22/114/)

<!-- 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/) / [More English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/) / [More English Fairy Tales, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/22/) / 114

# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, sentence 114

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was a farmer, and he had three cows, fine fat beauties they were.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** farmer · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** three cows

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (farmer), 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:pg14241:22:114
# text = There was a farmer, and he had three cows, fine fat beauties they were.
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	farmer	farmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
9	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
10	cows	cow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	fat	fat	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	beauties	beauty	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a farmer |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | farmer | three cows  fine fat beauties |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cow=Patient |

<!-- .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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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 113](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/22/113/)
- next →: [sentence 115](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/22/115/)
- ↑ back to [More English Fairy Tales, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/22/)