---
title: And in course of time they had a great many children. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And in course of time they had a great many children. Who acts: people. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Sillies, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Six Sillies, sentence 42

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And in course of time they had a great many children.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** great many children

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Sillies. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg540:28:42
# text = And in course of time they had a great many children.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	in	in	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADP	5	case	_	_
3	course	course	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	fixed	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	2	fixed	_	_
5	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	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 | **have** | past | people | a great many children |  |  | time |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |

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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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