---
title: A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. Who acts: girl. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Master of All Masters, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Master of All Masters, sentence 1

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A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant.

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**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** go, hire · **To what, where:** fair, girl

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Master of All Masters. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl), 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:pg7439:48:1
# text = A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	4	advmod	_	_
4	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	fair	fair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	hire	hire	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
10	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	9	obj	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | a girl |  |  | the fair |  | once *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to fair=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **hire** | to-infinitive | a girl *not said here* | girl |  |  |  | for servant | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent herself=Theme for servant=Beneficiary |

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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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