---
title: Once upon a time there lived a man who had nearly as many children a… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there lived a man who had nearly as many children as there were sparrows in the garden. Who acts: man, sparrows. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/9/8/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 8

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Once upon a time there lived a man who had nearly as many children as there were sparrows in the garden.

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**Who acts:** man, sparrows · **What happens:** live, have, be · **To what, where:** man, many children

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, sparrows), 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:pg3282:9:8
# text = Once upon a time there lived a man who had nearly as many children as there were sparrows in the garden.
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	6	obl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
6	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	nearly	nearly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	as	as	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
15	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	17	expl	_	_
17	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
18	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	garden	garden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a man |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme man=Location |
| 2 | **have** | past | a man | many children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 3 | **be** | past | sparrows in the garden |  |  | there |  |  | 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:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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