---
title: ‘In my youth, when I was an old man, we had a quantity of beehives. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘In my youth, when I was an old man, we had a quantity of beehives. Who acts: I, we. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Finest Liar in the World, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Finest Liar in the World, sentence 22

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‘In my youth, when I was an old man, we had a quantity of beehives.

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**Who acts:** I, we · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** old man, quantity, youth

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Finest Liar in the World. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, we), 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:pg641:3:22
# text = ‘In my youth, when I was an old man, we had a quantity of beehives.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	youth	youth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
13	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	quantity	quantity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	beehives	beehive	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | I | a old man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | we | a quantity of beehives |  | my youth and a old man |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent quantity=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 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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