---
title: Once upon a time there lived an emperor who had three sons. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there lived an emperor who had three sons. Who acts: emperor. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/8/30/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 30

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Once upon a time there lived an emperor who had three sons.

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**Who acts:** emperor · **What happens:** live, have · **To what, where:** emperor, three sons

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, 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 (emperor), 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:pg2435:8:30
# text = Once upon a time there lived an emperor who had three sons.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	6	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	6	obl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
6	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	sons	son	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a emperor |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme emperor=Location |
| 2 | **have** | past | a emperor | three sons |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent son=Patient |

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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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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