---
title: What a life that poor man led with his wife, to be sure! — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: What a life that poor man led with his wife, to be sure! Who acts: life. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Two in a Sack, sentence 1

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What a life that poor man led with his wife, to be sure!

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**Who acts:** life · **What happens:** lead, be · **To what, where:** that

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life), 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:pg641:17:1
# text = What a life that poor man led with his wife, to be sure!
1	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det:predet	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	obl	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	led	lead	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	cop	_	_
14	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lead** | past | what life | that |  |  |  | with man's wife | vn result-27.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Precondition |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive | what life *not said here* |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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