---
title: The farmer’s wife and the sexton sat at the table, but there was no… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The farmer’s wife and the sexton sat at the table, but there was no one else. Who acts: wife, one. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/41/32/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/41/) / 32

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The farmer’s wife and the sexton sat at the table, but there was no one else.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wife, one · **What happens:** sit, be · **To what, where:** table

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, one), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:41:32
# text = The farmer’s wife and the sexton sat at the table, but there was no one else.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	farmer	farmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	sexton	sexton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
8	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	table	table	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	15	expl	_	_
15	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
16	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	17	det	_	_
17	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
18	else	else	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | the farmer's wife and the sexton |  |  | the table |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at table=Location |
| 2 | **be** | past | no one |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/41/31/)
- next →: [sentence 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/41/33/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/41/)