---
title: ‘Once a prince, but changed you be Into a flounder in the sea. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Once a prince, but changed you be Into a flounder in the sea. Who acts: prince. 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 201

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‘Once a prince, but changed you be Into a flounder in the sea.

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** change, be · **To what, where:** you, flounder

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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 (prince), 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:pg7277:54:201
# text = ‘Once a prince, but changed you be Into a flounder in the sea.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	4	advmod	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	changed	change	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	nsubj	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	cop	_	_
10	Into	into	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	flounder	flounder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **change** | past |  | you |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | infinitive | a prince |  |  | a flounder |  | in the sea | 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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