---
title: It was a lonely, desolate life in the old manor house. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a lonely, desolate life in the old manor house. Who acts: It. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, sentence 88

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It was a lonely, desolate life in the old manor house.

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** be, desolate · **To what, where:** life, old manor house

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It), 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:pg27200:149:88
# text = It was a lonely, desolate life in the old manor house.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	lonely	lonely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	desolate	desolate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
7	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
11	manor	manor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | It |  |  |  |  | lonely *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **desolate** | infinitive |  | life |  | the old manor house |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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