---
title: Once upon a time there was a fisherman who had a wife and three chil… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there was a fisherman who had a wife and three children. Who acts: fisherman. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Crab(5), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Golden Crab(5), sentence 3

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Once upon a time there was a fisherman who had a wife and three children.

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**Who acts:** fisherman · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** wife

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Crab(5). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fisherman), 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:pg640:7:3
# text = Once upon a time there was a fisherman who had a wife and three children.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	6	advmod	_	_
2	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
5	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	6	expl	_	_
6	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a fisherman |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | a fisherman | a wife and three children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=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 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.

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