---
title: The poor king was in a terrible case. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The poor king was in a terrible case. Who acts: poor king. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Nix Nought Nothing, sentence 12

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The poor king was in a terrible case.

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**Who acts:** poor king · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** terrible case

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor king), 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:pg7439:12:12
# text = The poor king was in a terrible case.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	terrible	terrible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	case	case	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the poor king |  |  | a terrible case |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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