---
title: And he tried to quiet the baby as if it had been a young dragon. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And he tried to quiet the baby as if it had been a young dragon. Who acts: peace, shop. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, The Dragon Tamers], 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/pg23661/12/148/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 148

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And he tried to quiet the baby as if it had been a young dragon.

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**Who acts:** peace, shop · **What happens:** try, quiet, be · **To what, where:** baby

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, The Dragon Tamers\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (peace, shop), 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:pg23661:12:148
# text = And he tried to quiet the baby as if it had been a young dragon.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	quiet	quiet	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	baby	baby	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	as	as	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADP	15	case	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	fixed	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
12	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	cop	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | peace |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **quiet** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | peace *not said here* | the baby |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent baby=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | past · perfect | shop |  |  |  |  | as a young dragon | tree rules |

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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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