---
title: Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a hou… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood. Who acts: Three Bears. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Bears, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Bears, sentence 1

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Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood.

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**Who acts:** Three Bears · **What happens:** be, live together · **To what, where:** house

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Bears. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Three Bears), 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:pg7439:21:1
# text = Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood.
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	1	obl	_	_
5	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	6	expl	_	_
6	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	Three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	Bears	bear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
11	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	together	together	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | Three Bears |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **live together** | past | Three Bears |  |  | a house of Bears's own and a wood |  | together *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in house=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:** «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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