---
title: He had grown quite tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in plac… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: He had grown quite tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he was soft and furry to stroke. Who acts: Dragon, rusty plates. 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/pg23661/12/276/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 276

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He had grown quite tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he was soft and furry to stroke.

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**Who acts:** Dragon, rusty plates · **What happens:** grow, fall off, be, stroke

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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, rusty plates), 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:pg23661:12:276
# text = He had grown quite tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he was soft and furry to stroke.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	grown	grow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	tame	tame	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	rusty	rusty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	plates	plate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	fallen	fall	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
13	off	off	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	places	place	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
18	underneath	underneath	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	_
19	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
20	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
21	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	furry	furry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	conj	_	_
24	to	to	PART	TO	_	25	mark	_	_
25	stroke	stroke	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	23	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past · perfect | Dragon |  |  |  |  | tame *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **fall off** | past · perfect | Dragon's rusty plates |  |  |  |  | in places | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.patient V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient in place=Attribute |
| 3 | **is** | past | Dragon |  |  |  |  | soft *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **be** |  | Dragon *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **stroke** | to-infinitive | Dragon *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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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