---
title: "What's the reward you would ask?" says the king's son. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "What's the reward you would ask?" says the king's son. Who acts: reward, son. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 50

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"What's the reward you would ask?" says the king's son.

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**Who acts:** reward, son · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (reward, son), 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:pg7885:31:50
# text = "What's the reward you would ask?" says the king's son.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	reward	reward	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | would · present | the reward |  |  |  |  | ask *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | present | the king's son |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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