---
title: ‘Madam, I will serve you for nothing,’ said the poor Princess, whose… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Madam, I will serve you for nothing,’ said the poor Princess, whose spirits were sinking lower and lower. Who acts: I, poor Princess, spirits. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every cla
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/121/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Ce…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/) / 121

# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, sentence 121

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Madam, I will serve you for nothing,’ said the poor Princess, whose spirits were sinking lower and lower.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I, poor Princess, spirits · **What happens:** serve, say, sink · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, poor Princess, spirits), 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:pg7277:12:121
# text = ‘Madam, I will serve you for nothing,’ said the poor Princess, whose spirits were sinking lower and lower.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Madam	madam	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	serve	serve	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	spirits	spirit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
19	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	sinking	sink	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	acl:relcl	_	_
21	lower	low	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	20	xcomp	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	lower	low	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	21	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **serve** | future | I | you |  |  |  | for nothing; Madam *vocative* | vn fulfilling-13.4.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Theme for nothing=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the poor Princess |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **sink** | past · progressive | spirits |  |  |  |  | low *property* | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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:** «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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: [sentence 120](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/120/)
- next →: [sentence 122](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/122/)
- ↑ back to [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/)