---
title: The fisher replied: ‘What good, pray, will a castle be to me if I ha… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The fisher replied: ‘What good, pray, will a castle be to me if I have nothing to eat in it?’ Who acts: fisher, castle, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads, 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/pg7277/49/4/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Golden Lads](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/49/) / 4

# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Lads, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The fisher replied: ‘What good, pray, will a castle be to me if I have nothing to eat in it?’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** fisher, castle, I · **What happens:** reply, pray, be, have, eat · **To what, where:** nothing, castle

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fisher, castle, I), 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:pg7277:49:4
# text = The fisher replied: ‘What good, pray, will a castle be to me if I have nothing to eat in it?’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	fisher	fisher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj	_	_
7	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	pray	pray	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	_
17	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
20	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	19	obj	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	acl	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the fisher |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **pray** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 3 | **is** | future | a castle |  |  |  |  | to me | tree rules |
| 4 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | I | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient |
| 5 | **eat** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | nothing *not said here* |  | castle |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/49/3/)
- next →: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/49/5/)
- ↑ back to [The Golden Lads](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/49/)