---
title: "If thy father had that rod," says the giant, "what would he do with… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "If thy father had that rod," says the giant, "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/pg7885/31/77/)

<!-- 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/) / 77

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 77

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

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** have, say, do · **To what, where:** rod, giant · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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:pg7885:31:77
# text = "If thy father had that rod," says the giant, "what would he do with it?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	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	10	advcl	_	_
6	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	rod	rod	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	giant	giant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	18	obj	_	_
16	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
19	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	18	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 | **say** *speech: ask* | present |  | the giant |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **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 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/76/)
- next →: [sentence 78](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/78/)
- ↑ back to [The Battle of the Birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/31/)