---
title: Once upon a time two merchants lived in a certain town just on the v… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time two merchants lived in a certain town just on the verge of a stream. Who acts: two merchants. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 3, sentence 154

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Once upon a time two merchants lived in a certain town just on the verge of a stream.

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**Who acts:** two merchants · **What happens:** live · **To what, where:** certain town

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (two merchants), 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:pg22373:13:154
# text = Once upon a time two merchants lived in a certain town just on the verge of a stream.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	7	advmod	_	_
2	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
5	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	merchants	merchant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	certain	certain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
12	just	just	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	verge	verge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	stream	stream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past | two merchants |  |  | a certain town on the verge of a stream |  | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in town=Location |

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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:** «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (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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