---
title: Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palac… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palace was surrounded by a spacious garden. Who acts: spacious garden. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 1

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Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palace was surrounded by a spacious garden.

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**Who acts:** spacious garden · **What happens:** live, surround · **To what, where:** king, palace

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spacious garden), 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:pg503:2:1
# text = Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palace was surrounded by a spacious garden.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	10	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	10	obl	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	certain	certain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	country	country	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
9	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	_
10	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj:pass	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	surrounded	surround	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	acl:relcl	_	_
17	by	by	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	spacious	spacious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	garden	garden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl:agent	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a king |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme king=Location |
| 2 | **surround** | past · passive | a spacious garden | palace |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme subject=Co-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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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