---
title: Once there was a poor widow, as often there has been, and she had on… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Once there was a poor widow, as often there has been, and she had one son. Who acts: poor widow, widow. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Comrades, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Jack and His Comrades, sentence 1

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Once there was a poor widow, as often there has been, and she had one son.

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**Who acts:** poor widow, widow · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** one son

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Comrades. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor widow, widow), 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:pg7885:18:1
# text = Once there was a poor widow, as often there has been, and she had one son.
1	Once	once	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	advcl	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	widow	widow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	often	often	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
10	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	12	expl	_	_
11	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
17	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	18	nummod	_	_
18	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a poor widow |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **be** | present · perfect | a poor widow *not said here* |  |  | there |  | often *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | past | widow | one son |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent son=Patient |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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