---
title: I was once a king, and my kingdom was the most splendid in the world. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I was once a king, and my kingdom was the most splendid in the world. Who acts: I, kingdom. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Wonderful Sheep, part 2, sentence 13

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I was once a king, and my kingdom was the most splendid in the world.

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**Who acts:** I, kingdom · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** king, world

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, kingdom), 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:pg503:31:13
# text = I was once a king, and my kingdom was the most splendid in the world.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	kingdom	kingdom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	13	advmod	_	_
13	splendid	splendid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | I | a king |  |  |  | once *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | my kingdom |  |  | the world |  | splendid *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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