---
title: ‘Alas! flounder,’ he said, ‘my wife wants to be emperor.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Alas! flounder,’ he said, ‘my wife wants to be emperor.’ Who acts: flounder, wife. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 127

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‘Alas! flounder,’ he said, ‘my wife wants to be emperor.’

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**Who acts:** flounder, wife · **What happens:** say, want, be · **To what, where:** emperor · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (flounder, wife), 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:pg7277:54:127
# text = ‘Alas! flounder,’ he said, ‘my wife wants to be emperor.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	flounder	flounder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	wants	want	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | flounder |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **want** | present | my wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 3 | **is a** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | my wife *not said here* | emperor |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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.

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