---
title: "If thy father had that rod what would he do with it?" — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "If thy father had that rod what would he do with it?" Who acts: father. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, 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/pg7885/31/69/)

<!-- 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/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Battle of the Birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/) / 69

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 69

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"If thy father had that rod what would he do with it?"

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** have, do · **To what, where:** rod

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (father), 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:pg7885:31:69
# text = "If thy father had that rod what would he do with it?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
3	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
6	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	rod	rod	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	obj	_	_
9	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | past | thy father | that rod |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rod=Patient |
| 2 | **do** *in a quote* | would | father |  |  |  |  | with rod | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 68](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/68/)
- next →: [sentence 70](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/70/)
- ↑ back to [The Battle of the Birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/)