---
title: There was once upon a time a poor woman who would have given all she… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once upon a time a poor woman who would have given all she possessed for a child, but she hadn’t one. Who acts: poor woman, woman. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Snake, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/25/1/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Snake, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was once upon a time a poor woman who would have given all she possessed for a child, but she hadn’t one.

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**Who acts:** poor woman, woman · **What happens:** be, give, possess, have · **To what, where:** poor woman, time, one

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor woman, woman), 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:pg7277:25:1
# text = There was once upon a time a poor woman who would have given all she possessed for a child, but she hadn’t one.
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	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
10	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
11	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	aux	_	_
13	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	acl:relcl	_	_
14	all	all	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	possessed	possess	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
17	for	for	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
21	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
22	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
23	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	25	advmod	_	_
25	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past |  |  |  | there | time | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **give** | would · perfect · passive |  | a poor woman |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 3 | **possess** | past | a poor woman | a time *not said here* |  |  |  | for a child; all *property* | vn own-100.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot time=Theme |
| 4 | **have** | past | woman | one |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent one=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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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