---
title: ‘Ah, wife!’ replied her husband, ‘why should we be king? — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Ah, wife!’ replied her husband, ‘why should we be king? Who acts: wife, we. 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 75

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‘Ah, wife!’ replied her husband, ‘why should we be king?

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**Who acts:** wife, we · **What happens:** reply, be · **To what, where:** husband, king

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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 (wife, we), 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:pg7277:54:75
# text = ‘Ah, wife!’ replied her husband, ‘why should we be king?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	husband	husband	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
14	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | wife | wife's husband |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent husband=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** | should | we | king |  |  |  |  | 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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