---
title: Not very long ago there lived a King, the fame of whose wisdom was s… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Not very long ago there lived a King, the fame of whose wisdom was spread far and wide. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Snake, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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

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Not very long ago there lived a King, the fame of whose wisdom was spread far and wide.

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**What happens:** not live, spread · **To what, where:** King

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg7277:50:1
# text = Not very long ago there lived a King, the fame of whose wisdom was spread far and wide.
1	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
2	very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
4	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
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	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nsubj:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	fame	fame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	wisdom	wisdom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	spread	spread	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	parataxis	_	_
17	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	16	advmod	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **live** | past |  |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **spread** | past · passive |  | a King |  |  |  | far *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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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