---
title: Once upon a time there lived a girl who lost her father and mother w… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there lived a girl who lost her father and mother when she was quite a tiny child. Who acts: girl. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there lived a girl who lost her father and mother when she was quite a tiny child.

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**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** live, lose, be · **To what, where:** girl, father, tiny child

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl), 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:pg7277:44:1
# text = Once upon a time there lived a girl who lost her father and mother when she was quite a tiny child.
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	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	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	lost	lose	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
15	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	21	advmod	_	_
16	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
18	quite	quite	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	21	det:predet	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	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 girl |  | there | time | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme girl=Location |
| 2 | **lose** | past | a girl | girl's father and mother |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent father=Eventuality |
| 3 | **is a** | past | girl | quite tiny child |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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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