---
title: There was the man sitting in it. — Indian Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was the man sitting in it. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 9, 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/pg7128/15/39/)

<!-- 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/) / [Indian Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/) / [Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/15/) / 39

# Indian Fairy Tales, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 9, sentence 39

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was the man sitting in it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, sit · **To what, where:** cell

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7128:15:39
# text = There was the man sitting in it.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	acl	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | the man |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | gerund | the man *not said here* |  |  | cell |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in it=Location |

<!-- .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:** «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7128 (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: [sentence 38](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/15/38/)
- next →: [sentence 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/15/40/)
- ↑ back to [Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/15/)