---
title: There was once a fisherman who was called Salmon, and his Christian… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a fisherman who was called Salmon, and his Christian name was Matte. Who acts: fisherman, Christian name. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3454/23/17/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 17

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There was once a fisherman who was called Salmon, and his Christian name was Matte.

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**Who acts:** fisherman, Christian name · **What happens:** be, call, name · **To what, where:** fisherman · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fisherman, Christian name), 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:pg3454:23:17
# text = There was once a fisherman who was called Salmon, and his Christian name was Matte.
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	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
8	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	Salmon	Salmon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	Christian	Christian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	Matte	matte	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	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 fisherman |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | past · passive |  | a fisherman |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |
| 3 | **is** | past | fisherman's Christian name |  |  |  |  | matte *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **name** |  | fisherman |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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