---
title: Once upon a time three musicians left their home and set out on thei… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time three musicians left their home and set out on their travels. Who acts: three musicians. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Musicians, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Musicians, sentence 1

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Once upon a time three musicians left their home and set out on their travels.

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**Who acts:** three musicians · **What happens:** leave, set out, travel · **To what, where:** home

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Musicians. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (three musicians), 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:pg7277:55:1
# text = Once upon a time three musicians left their home and set out on their travels.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	7	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	1	obl	_	_
5	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	musicians	musician	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	left	leave	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
12	out	out	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
13	on	on	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	travels	travel	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **leave** | past | three musicians | musicians's home |  |  |  | once *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent home=Theme |
| 2 | **set out** | past | three musicians *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **travel** | present | three musicians *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=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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