---
title: But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep. Who acts: wicked Prince, Prince, promises. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, The Fiery Dragon], 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/pg23661/13/125/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Fiery Dragon\], sentence 125

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But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep.

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**Who acts:** wicked Prince, Prince, promises · **What happens:** make, not make, not keep · **To what, where:** promises

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, The Fiery Dragon\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wicked Prince, Prince, promises), 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:pg23661:13:125
# text = But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
2	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	6	mark	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	wicked	wicked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
7	promises	promise	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | past | the wicked Prince | promises |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent promise=Product |
| 2 | **not** **make** | past · do-support | Prince | promises *= promise* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **keep** | to-infinitive | promises *= promise* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «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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