---
title: There was once a lad who went to look for a place. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a lad who went to look for a place. Who acts: lad. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 26, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 78

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There was once a lad who went to look for a place.

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**Who acts:** lad · **What happens:** be, go, look

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lad), 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:pg5615:26:78
# text = There was once a lad who went to look for a place.
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	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a lad |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **go** | past | a lad |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **look** | to-infinitive | a lad *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for a place | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for place=Theme |

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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 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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