---
title: "He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. " — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. " Who acts: Dragon, Johnnie. 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/pg23661/12/261/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 261

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"He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. "

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**Who acts:** Dragon, Johnnie · **What happens:** not believe, say · **To what, where:** pet · **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 (Dragon, Johnnie), 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:pg23661:12:261
# text = "He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	'd	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	believe	believe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Johnnie	Johnnie	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **believe** *in a quote* | would | Dragon | pet |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Johnnie |  |  |  |  |  | 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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