---
title: There was once a king of Prussia whose name was Frederick William. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a king of Prussia whose name was Frederick William. Who acts: king, Frederick. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Kingdoms., sentence 1

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There was once a king of Prussia whose name was Frederick William.

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**Who acts:** king, Frederick · **What happens:** be, name · **To what, where:** Frederick

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, Frederick), 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:pg18442:43:1
# text = There was once a king of Prussia whose name was Frederick William.
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	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	Prussia	Prussia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	Frederick	Frederick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
12	William	William	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	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 |  |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | a king of Prussia | Frederick |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **name** |  | Frederick |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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