---
title: There were, once upon a time, three brothers, and the third was a fo… — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There were, once upon a time, three brothers, and the third was a fool. Who acts: three brothers, third. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Three Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Three Brothers, sentence 1

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There were, once upon a time, three brothers, and the third was a fool.

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**Who acts:** three brothers, third · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** fool

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Three Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (three brothers, third), 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:pg29672:18:1
# text = There were, once upon a time, three brothers, and the third was a fool.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|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	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
10	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	third	third	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	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 | three brothers |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the third | a fool |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», Project Gutenberg book 29672 (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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