---
title: This king once fell very ill--so ill that nobody thought he could li… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: This king once fell very ill--so ill that nobody thought he could live. Who acts: king, nobody. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Water of Life, sentence 2

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This king once fell very ill--so ill that nobody thought he could live.

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**Who acts:** king, nobody · **What happens:** fall, think, live · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, nobody), 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:pg2591:49:2
# text = This king once fell very ill--so ill that nobody thought he could live.
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	4	advmod	_	_
4	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	advcl	_	_
10	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	nsubj	_	_
12	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | this king |  |  |  |  | ill, once *property* | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **live** | could | king |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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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