---
title: One day he was out fishing, but caught nothing at all. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One day he was out fishing, but caught nothing at all. Who acts: One day, fishing. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princesses of Whiteland, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Three Princesses of Whiteland, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
One day he was out fishing, but caught nothing at all.

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**Who acts:** One day, fishing · **What happens:** be, catch · **To what, where:** fishing, nothing, all

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princesses of Whiteland. 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, fishing), 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:pg540:26:2
# text = One day he was out fishing, but caught nothing at all.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	out	out	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	fishing	fishing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	9	obj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | One day | fishing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **catch** | past | fishing *not said here* | nothing |  | all |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.source NP.asset»: agent=Agent nothing=Theme at all=Asset |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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