---
title: How could there be?" said his wife. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: How could there be?" said his wife. 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/pg23661/12/34/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 34

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How could there be?" said his wife.

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**What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** wife · **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: 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:pg23661:12:34
# text = How could there be?" said his wife.
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
4	be	be	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past |  | blacksmith's wife |  | there |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent wife=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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