---
title: The man had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and he was… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The man had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and he was delighted. Who acts: man. 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 15

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The man had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and he was delighted.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** not see, be · **To what, where:** anything

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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 (man), 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:pg641:17:15
# text = The man had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and he was delighted.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	obj	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	delighted	delighted	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | past · perfect | the man | anything |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer anything=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | man |  |  |  |  | delighted *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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