---
title: A rich woman sat up late one night carding and preparing wool, while… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A rich woman sat up late one night carding and preparing wool, while all the family and servants were asleep. Who acts: rich woman, one night, family. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Horned Women, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Horned Women, sentence 1

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A rich woman sat up late one night carding and preparing wool, while all the family and servants were asleep.

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**Who acts:** rich woman, one night, family · **What happens:** sit up, card, prepare, be · **To what, where:** wool

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Horned Women. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rich woman, one night, family), 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:pg7885:8:1
# text = A rich woman sat up late one night carding and preparing wool, while all the family and servants were asleep.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	rich	rich	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	up	up	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	late	late	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
7	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	carding	card	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	preparing	prepare	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	conj	_	_
12	wool	wool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
14	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	_
15	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	17	det:predet	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	family	family	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	servants	servant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	conj	_	_
20	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
21	asleep	asleep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit up** | past | a rich woman |  |  |  | night | late *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **card** | gerund | one night *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **prepare** | gerund | one night *not said here* | wool |  |  |  |  | vn establish-55.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wool=Patient |
| 4 | **is** | past | all family and servants |  |  |  |  | asleep *property* | tree rules |

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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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