---
title: There was, once upon a time, a widow, who had two daughters. — The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault · tree and pragmatics
description: There was, once upon a time, a widow, who had two daughters. Who acts: widow. A sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, _thomas Bodkin_, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, \_thomas Bodkin\_, part 1, sentence 55

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There was, once upon a time, a widow, who had two daughters.

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**Who acts:** widow · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** two daughters

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This is a sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, \_thomas Bodkin\_, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (widow), 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:pg29021:7:55
# text = There was, once upon a time, a widow, who had two daughters.
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	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	widow	widow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	daughters	daughter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	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 widow |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | a widow | two daughters |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent daughter=Patient |

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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:** «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Project Gutenberg book 29021 (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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