---
title: There was once a poor old fisherman, and one year he was not getting… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a poor old fisherman, and one year he was not getting much fish. Who acts: poor old fisherman, fisherman. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/1/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Sea-maiden](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/) / 1

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Sea-maiden, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was once a poor old fisherman, and one year he was not getting much fish.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** poor old fisherman, fisherman · **What happens:** be, not get · **To what, where:** much fish

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Sea-maiden. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor old fisherman, fisherman), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7885:21:1
# text = There was once a poor old fisherman, and one year he was not getting much fish.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
10	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl:unmarked	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	getting	get	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
16	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a poor old fisherman |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **get** | past · progressive | fisherman | much fish |  |  | year |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer fish=Stimulus |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [The Story-teller At Fault, 171](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/20/171/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/2/)
- ↑ back to [The Sea-maiden](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/21/)