---
title: There was once a poor man who could no longer afford to keep his onl… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a poor man who could no longer afford to keep his only son at home. Who acts: poor man. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Snake-leaves, sentence 1

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There was once a poor man who could no longer afford to keep his only son at home.

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**Who acts:** poor man · **What happens:** be, afford, keep · **To what, where:** only son, home

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor man), 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:pg7277:46:1
# text = There was once a poor man who could no longer afford to keep his only son at home.
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	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
9	no	no	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	longer	long	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	11	advmod	_	_
11	afford	afford	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl:relcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	only	only	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
17	at	at	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a poor man |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **afford** | could | a poor man |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **keep** | to-infinitive | a poor man *not said here* | man's only son |  | home |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent son=Theme at home=Location |

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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 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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