---
title: ‘Canst thou tell me the way to Soria Moria Castle?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Canst thou tell me the way to Soria Moria Castle?’ Who acts: thou. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Soria Moria Castle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Soria Moria Castle, sentence 143

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‘Canst thou tell me the way to Soria Moria Castle?’

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**Who acts:** thou · **What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** way, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Soria Moria Castle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thou), 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:pg540:6:143
# text = ‘Canst thou tell me the way to Soria Moria Castle?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Canst	can	AUX	MD	Style=Arch|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	Soria	Soria	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
10	Moria	Moria	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	Castle	Castle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | can | thou | the way | me |  |  | to Soria Moria Castle | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient way=Topic |

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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:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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