---
title: "Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina. Who acts: you, Tina. 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/pg23661/12/196/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 196

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"Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina.

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**Who acts:** you, Tina · **What happens:** not fight, say · **To what, where:** Dragon · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, Tina), 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:pg23661:12:196
# text = "Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	'd	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	fight	fight	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Tina	Tina	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **fight** *in a quote* | would | you | Dragon |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Tina |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent 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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