---
title: Once upon a time there was an old poet, one of those right good old… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there was an old poet, one of those right good old poets. Who acts: old poet. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Saucy Boy, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Saucy Boy, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there was an old poet, one of those right good old poets.

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**Who acts:** old poet · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Saucy Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old poet), 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:pg27200:164:1
# text = Once upon a time there was an old poet, one of those right good old poets.
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	1	obl	_	_
5	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	6	expl	_	_
6	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	poet	poet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	appos	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
13	those	that	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	17	nsubj	_	_
14	right	right	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
15	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
16	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	poets	poet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a old poet |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «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:** «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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