---
title: The flounder said to him, ‘Listen, fisherman. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The flounder said to him, ‘Listen, fisherman. Who acts: flounder. 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 4

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The flounder said to him, ‘Listen, fisherman.

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**Who acts:** flounder · **What happens:** say, listen · **To what, where:** fish, fisherman · **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), 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:pg7277:54:4
# text = The flounder said to him, ‘Listen, fisherman.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	flounder	flounder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | the flounder |  | fish |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to he=Recipient |
| 2 | **listen** | infinitive | the flounder *not said here* | fisherman |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |

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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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