---
title: There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was ve… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very young, and barely able to run alone. Who acts: merchant, that. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The King of the Golden Mountain, 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/pg2591/51/1/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The King of the Golden Mountain, sentence 1

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There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very young, and barely able to run alone.

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**Who acts:** merchant, that · **What happens:** be, have, run · **To what, where:** one child

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The King of the Golden Mountain. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merchant, that), 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:pg2591:51:1
# text = There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very young, and barely able to run alone.
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	merchant	merchant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	only	only	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
10	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	18	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	very	very	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	barely	barely	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	able	able	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	conj	_	_
23	to	to	PART	TO	_	24	mark	_	_
24	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	xcomp	_	_
25	alone	alone	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	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 merchant |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | a merchant | one child and a son |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | past | that |  |  |  |  | young *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **be** |  | that *not said here* |  |  |  |  | barely *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **run** | to-infinitive | that *not said here* |  |  |  |  | alone *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «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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