---
title: And every year a little son came to them as bonny as bonny could be. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And every year a little son came to them as bonny as bonny could be. Who acts: little son, bonny. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Earl Mar's Daughter, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Earl Mar's Daughter, sentence 22

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And every year a little son came to them as bonny as bonny could be.

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**Who acts:** little son, bonny · **What happens:** come, be · **To what, where:** birds

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Earl Mar's Daughter. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little son, bonny), 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:pg7439:35:22
# text = And every year a little son came to them as bonny as bonny could be.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	det	_	_
3	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	bonny	bonny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	bonny	bonny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	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 | **come** | past | a little son |  | birds *= bird* |  | year |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to they=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **can** | could | bonny as bonny |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «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:** «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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