---
title: Once upon a time, in a large forest, there lived an old woman and th… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time, in a large forest, there lived an old woman and three maidens. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, sentence 1

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Once upon a time, in a large forest, there lived an old woman and three maidens.

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**What happens:** live · **To what, where:** old woman

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg503:26:1
# text = Once upon a time, in a large forest, there lived an old woman and three maidens.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	12	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	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
11	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	12	expl	_	_
12	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	18	nummod	_	_
18	maidens	maiden	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a old woman and three maidens |  | there |  | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme woman=Location |

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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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