---
title: There once lived there a man and his wife, and they had twins whom t… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There once lived there a man and his wife, and they had twins whom the woman nursed tenderly. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Brewery of Eggshells, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Brewery of Eggshells, sentence 2

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There once lived there a man and his wife, and they had twins whom the woman nursed tenderly.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** live, have, nurse · **To what, where:** man, twins, woman

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Brewery of Eggshells. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7885:32:2
# text = There once lived there a man and his wife, and they had twins whom the woman nursed tenderly.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
2	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	advmod	_	_
3	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	twins	twin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
15	whom	whom	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	det:predet	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
18	nursed	nurse	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	acl	_	_
19	tenderly	tenderly	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a man and strife's wife |  | there; there |  | once *property* | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme man=Location |
| 2 | **have** | past | man | twins  whom woman |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent twin=Patient |
| 3 | **nurse** | participle |  | whom woman *not said here* |  |  |  | tenderly *property* | vn captain-29.8-1 «NP V PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent |

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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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