---
title: One day when he was in despair he said to himself: — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One day when he was in despair he said to himself: Who acts: One day, prisoner. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, sentence 25

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One day when he was in despair he said to himself:

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**Who acts:** One day, prisoner · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** despair, prisoner · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (One day, prisoner), 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:pg503:28:25
# text = One day when he was in despair he said to himself:
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	despair	despair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | One day |  |  | despair |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | prisoner | despair *not said here* | prisoner |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent despair=Topic to himself=Recipient |

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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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