---
title: "What time does he sleep today?" asked Nigel. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "What time does he sleep today?" asked Nigel. 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.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/10/97/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 10, sentence 97

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"What time does he sleep today?" asked Nigel.

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**Who acts:** Nigel · **What happens:** sleep, ask · **To what, where:** Nigel · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Nigel), 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:pg23661:10:97
# text = "What time does he sleep today?" asked Nigel.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
3	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	sleep	sleep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
7	today	today	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Nigel	Nigel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sleep** *in a quote* | present · do-support | Nigel |  |  |  | time; today |  | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | Nigel |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent nigel=Recipient clause=Topic |

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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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