---
title: ‘Go if you like, you idiot; but what good will it do you?’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Go if you like, you idiot; but what good will it do you?’ Who acts: you, idiot. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Watch, sentence 10

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‘Go if you like, you idiot; but what good will it do you?’

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**Who acts:** you, idiot · **What happens:** go, like, idiot, do · **To what, where:** you

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, idiot), 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:pg7277:8:10
# text = ‘Go if you like, you idiot; but what good will it do you?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	like	like	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	idiot	idiot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	15	obj	_	_
12	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
13	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	15	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **like** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 3 | **idiot** |  | you |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **do** | future | idiot |  | you |  |  |  | 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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