---
title: But they couldn't show any dragons' tongues, so they were turned away. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But they couldn't show any dragons' tongues, so they were turned away. Who acts: signs. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/114/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, sentence 114

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But they couldn't show any dragons' tongues, so they were turned away.

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**Who acts:** signs · **What happens:** not show, turn away · **To what, where:** tongues, signs

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (signs), 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:pg14241:30:114
# text = But they couldn't show any dragons' tongues, so they were turned away.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	7	det	_	_
7	dragons	dragon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	'	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	tongues	tongue	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	turned	turn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	_
15	away	away	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **show** | could | signs *= sign* | any dragons's tongues |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent tongue=Recipient |
| 2 | **turn away** | past · passive |  | signs *= sign* |  |  |  | away *property* | vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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