---
title: In a certain town there lived a judge who was married but had no chi… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In a certain town there lived a judge who was married but had no children. Who acts: judge. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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

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In a certain town there lived a judge who was married but had no children.

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**Who acts:** judge · **What happens:** live, be, have · **To what, where:** judge, certain town, children

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (judge), 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:pg641:41:1
# text = In a certain town there lived a judge who was married but had no children.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	certain	certain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	town	town	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	8	det	_	_
8	judge	judge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	married	married	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	15	det	_	_
15	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a judge |  | a certain town; there |  |  | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme judge=Location |
| 2 | **is** | past | a judge |  |  |  |  | married *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **have** | past |  | no children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=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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