---
title: Twelve years ago he built a castle on some land of mine. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Twelve years ago he built a castle on some land of mine. Who acts: Mark. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, sentence 81

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Twelve years ago he built a castle on some land of mine.

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**Who acts:** Mark · **What happens:** build · **To what, where:** castle, land

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mark), 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:pg641:4:81
# text = Twelve years ago he built a castle on some land of mine.
1	Twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	built	build	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	10	det	_	_
10	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	mine	my	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **build** | past | Mark | a castle |  | some land of mine |  | ago *property* | vn base-97.1 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent castle=Theme on land=Source |

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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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