---
title: There was once a king in Ireland, and he had three daughters, and ve… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a king in Ireland, and he had three daughters, and very nice princesses they were. Who acts: king. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3454/12/107/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 107

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There was once a king in Ireland, and he had three daughters, and very nice princesses they were.

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** nice princesses, three daughters

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king), 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:pg3454:12:107
# text = There was once a king in Ireland, and he had three daughters, and very nice princesses they were.
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	5	det	_	_
5	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	Ireland	Ireland	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
13	daughters	daughter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	very	very	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	princesses	princess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
19	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	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 king in Ireland | nice princesses |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | king | three 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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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