---
title: Seven years passed thus and then a great trouble came to them. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Seven years passed thus and then a great trouble came to them. Who acts: great trouble. 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 24

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Seven years passed thus and then a great trouble came to them.

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**Who acts:** great trouble · **What happens:** pass, come · **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 (great trouble), 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:pg7439:35:24
# text = Seven years passed thus and then a great trouble came to them.
1	Seven	seven	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
6	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	trouble	trouble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | past |  |  |  |  | year | thus *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | past | a great trouble |  | birds *= bird* |  | then |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to they=Initial\_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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