---
title: "Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon. Who acts: dragon. 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/pg23661/12/71/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers\], sentence 71

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"Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon.

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**Who acts:** dragon · **What happens:** eat, say · **To what, where:** you · **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), 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:pg23661:12:71
# text = "Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	_
3	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	'll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** *in a quote* | future | the dragon *= dragon* | you |  |  |  | first *property* | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the dragon |  |  |  |  |  | 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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