---
title: Once upon a time what happened did happen: and if it had not happene… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time what happened did happen: and if it had not happened, you would never have heard this story. Who acts: time, it, you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/1/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/) / 1

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Once upon a time what happened did happen: and if it had not happened, you would never have heard this story.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** time, it, you · **What happens:** happen, not happen, not hear · **To what, where:** story

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (time, it, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:35:1
# text = Once upon a time what happened did happen: and if it had not happened, you would never have heard this story.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	8	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	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
6	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
7	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	happen	happen	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	21	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	21	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
17	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
18	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
19	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	21	advmod	_	_
20	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	aux	_	_
21	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
22	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	23	det	_	_
23	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past | a time |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **happen** | past · do-support |  |  |  |  |  | once *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **happen** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | it |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **hear** | would · perfect | you | this story |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer story=Stimulus |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [The Young Man Who Would Have…, 48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/34/48/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/2/)
- ↑ back to [The Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/)