---
title: Once upon a time there stood before the palace of an emperor a golde… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there stood before the palace of an emperor a golden apple tree, which blossomed and bore fruit each night. Who acts: golden apple tree. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there stood before the palace of an emperor a golden apple tree, which blossomed and bore fruit each night.

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**Who acts:** golden apple tree · **What happens:** stand, blossom, bear · **To what, where:** golden apple tree, palace, fruit

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (golden apple tree), 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:pg641:7:1
# text = Once upon a time there stood before the palace of an emperor a golden apple tree, which blossomed and bore fruit each night.
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	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	before	before	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
14	golden	golden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
15	apple	apple	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	_
16	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
19	blossomed	blossom	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	acl:relcl	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	bore	bear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	conj	_	_
22	fruit	fruit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	_
23	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	24	det	_	_
24	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  | a golden apple tree |  | the palace of a emperor; there | time | once *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent before palace=Location |
| 2 | **blossom** | past | a golden apple tree |  |  |  |  |  | vn entity\_specific\_cos-45.5 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **bear** | past | a golden apple tree *not said here* | fruit |  |  | night |  | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fruit=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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 Goat’s Ears of the Emper…, 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/6/29/)
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