---
title: "They saw a cloud of steam." — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "They saw a cloud of steam." Who acts: children. 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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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 1, sentence 58

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"They saw a cloud of steam."

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**Who acts:** children · **What happens:** see, cloud · **To what, where:** cloud, steam

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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 (children), 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:pg23661:1:58
# text = "They saw a cloud of steam."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	cloud	cloud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	steam	steam	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** *in a quote* | past | children *= child* | a cloud of steam |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer cloud=Stimulus |
| 2 | **cloud** *in a quote* |  |  | steam |  |  |  |  | nom cloud «phenomenon transitive»: of=patient |

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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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