---
title: Once upon a time there lived a poor woman who had only one child, an… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there lived a poor woman who had only one child, and he was a little boy called Hassebu. Who acts: poor woman, child. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/1/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Hassebu, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there lived a poor woman who had only one child, and he was a little boy called Hassebu.

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**Who acts:** poor woman, child · **What happens:** live, have, be, call · **To what, where:** poor woman, one child, little boy · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor woman, child), 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:pg641:30:1
# text = Once upon a time there lived a poor woman who had only one child, and he was a little boy called Hassebu.
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	6	obl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
6	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	_
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
18	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
22	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	21	acl	_	_
23	Hassebu	Hassebu	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a poor woman |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme woman=Location |
| 2 | **have** | past | a poor woman | one child |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 3 | **is a** | past | child | a little boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **call** | participle |  | a little boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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- ← previous: [The Nunda, Eater of People, 224](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/224/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/2/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Hassebu](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/)