---
title: ‘You go down; the flounder can quite well do that.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You go down; the flounder can quite well do that.’ Who acts: You, 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/54/44/)

<!-- 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 Story of the Fisherman and His Wife](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/54/) / 44

# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 44

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘You go down; the flounder can quite well do that.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** You, flounder · **What happens:** go down, do · **To what, where:** that

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (You, flounder), 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:pg7277:54:44
# text = ‘You go down; the flounder can quite well do that.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	go	go	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	down	down	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	flounder	flounder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
9	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	11	advmod	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	SYM	NFP	_	3	discourse	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go down** | present | You |  |  |  |  | down *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **do** | can | the flounder | that |  |  |  | well *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality |

<!-- .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 43](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/54/43/)
- next →: [sentence 45](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/54/45/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/54/)