---
title: And the tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And the tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge. Who acts: tide, sleepy little waves. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 11, sentence 30

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And the tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge.

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**Who acts:** tide, sleepy little waves · **What happens:** be, lap · **To what, where:** edge

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tide, sleepy little waves), 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:pg23661:11:30
# text = And the tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	tide	tide	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	low	low	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	sleepy	sleepy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	waves	wave	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	lapped	lap	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	edge	edge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the tide |  |  |  |  | low *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **lap** | past | sleepy little waves | the sand's edge |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent edge=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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