---
title: There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet. Who acts: young man. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What One Can Invent, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What One Can Invent, sentence 1

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There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet.

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**Who acts:** young man · **What happens:** be, study · **To what, where:** poet

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What One Can Invent. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (young 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:pg27200:206:1
# text = There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet.
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	6	det	_	_
5	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	studying	study	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
11	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	poet	poet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	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 young man |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **study** | past · progressive | a young man |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive | a young man *not said here* | a poet |  |  |  |  | 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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