---
title: He tried it by square root and by cube root. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: He tried it by square root and by cube root. Who acts: Nigel. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 10, 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/pg23661/10/124/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Book of Dragons](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/) / [Opening, part 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/10/) / 124

# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 10, sentence 124

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He tried it by square root and by cube root.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Nigel · **What happens:** try · **To what, where:** piece

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nigel), 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:pg23661:10:124
# text = He tried it by square root and by cube root.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	square	square	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	root	root	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	cube	cube	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	root	root	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | Nigel | piece |  |  |  | by square root and cube root | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 123](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/10/123/)
- next →: [sentence 125](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/10/125/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/10/)