---
title: Now what had happened was this. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now what had happened was this. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 39, sentence 112

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Now what had happened was this.

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**What happens:** happen, be · **To what, where:** this

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3027:39:112
# text = Now what had happened was this.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
2	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | this |  |  |  |  | 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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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