---
title: They had three children, and my story happened while the youngest wa… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They had three children, and my story happened while the youngest was a baby. Who acts: farmer, story. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, 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/pg3454/6/82/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 82

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They had three children, and my story happened while the youngest was a baby.

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**Who acts:** farmer, story · **What happens:** have, happen, be · **To what, where:** three children, youngest baby

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (farmer, story), 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:pg3454:6:82
# text = They had three children, and my story happened while the youngest was a baby.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
4	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
10	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	15	amod	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	baby	baby	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | farmer | three children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 2 | **happen** | past | my story |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | past | my story *not said here* | the youngest baby |  |  |  |  | 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 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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