---
title: There was once a girl so poor that she had nothing to live on, and w… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a girl so poor that she had nothing to live on, and wandered about the world asking for charity. Who acts: girl. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 21, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/21/10/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 21, sentence 10

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There was once a girl so poor that she had nothing to live on, and wandered about the world asking for charity.

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**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** be, have, live on, wander, ask · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl), 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:pg5615:21:10
# text = There was once a girl so poor that she had nothing to live on, and wandered about the world asking for charity.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	10	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	wandered	wander	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
18	about	about	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
21	asking	ask	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	17	xcomp	_	_
22	for	for	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	charity	charity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a girl |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | girl | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient |
| 3 | **live on** | to-infinitive | girl *not said here* | nothing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **wander** | past | a girl *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about the world | tree rules |
| 5 | **ask** *speech: ask* | gerund | a girl *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for charity | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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