---
title: The Chancellor said, "Don't be a silly little King." — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: The Chancellor said, "Don't be a silly little King." Who acts: Chancellor, silly little King. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 1, 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/pg23661/1/142/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 1, sentence 142

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The Chancellor said, "Don't be a silly little King."

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**Who acts:** Chancellor, silly little King · **What happens:** say, not be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Chancellor, silly little King), 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:pg23661:1:142
# text = The Chancellor said, "Don't be a silly little King."
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Chancellor	Chancellor	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Chancellor |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **be** *in a quote* | infinitive · do-support | a silly little King |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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:** «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Project Gutenberg book 23661 (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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