---
title: And the boy could reef a sail and coil a rope and keep the ship's no… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And the boy could reef a sail and coil a rope and keep the ship's nose steady before the wind. Who acts: sail. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 10, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 10, sentence 52

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And the boy could reef a sail and coil a rope and keep the ship's nose steady before the wind.

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**Who acts:** sail · **What happens:** coil, keep · **To what, where:** rope, nose

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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 (sail), 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:pg23661:10:52
# text = And the boy could reef a sail and coil a rope and keep the ship's nose steady before the wind.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	reef	reef	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	sail	sail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	coil	coil	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	rope	rope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	's	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
18	steady	steady	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
19	before	before	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **coil** | infinitive | a sail | a rope |  |  |  |  | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent rope=Material |
| 2 | **keep** | infinitive | a sail *not said here* | the ship's nose |  |  |  | steady *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nose=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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