---
title: There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, 3. How Partlet Died and Was Buried, and How Chanticleer Died of Grief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, 3. How Partlet Died and Was Buried, and How Chanticleer Died of Grief, sentence 28

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There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, have, wish

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, 3. How Partlet Died and Was Buried, and How Chanticleer Died of Grief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg2591:18:28
# text = There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	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	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
11	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	obl	_	_
14	wished	wish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	conj	_	_
15	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	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 man and a woman |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | a man and a woman |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **wish** | participle | a man and a woman *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for a child | vn long-32.2 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Pivot for child=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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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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