---
title: Sabrinetta stroked the pig, because Elfin had no hands for stroking… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Sabrinetta stroked the pig, because Elfin had no hands for stroking or for anything else. Who acts: Sabrinetta, Elfin. 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/pg23661/13/231/)

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# The Book of Dragons, The Fiery Dragon\], sentence 231

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Sabrinetta stroked the pig, because Elfin had no hands for stroking or for anything else.

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**Who acts:** Sabrinetta, Elfin · **What happens:** stroke, have · **To what, where:** pig, hands

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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 (Sabrinetta, Elfin), 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:pg23661:13:231
# text = Sabrinetta stroked the pig, because Elfin had no hands for stroking or for anything else.
1	Sabrinetta	Sabrinetta	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	stroked	stroke	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	Elfin	Elfin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	10	det	_	_
10	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
12	stroking	stroke	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	12	conj	_	_
16	else	else	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stroke** | past | Sabrinetta | the pig |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pig=Experiencer |
| 2 | **have** | past | Elfin | no hands |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |
| 3 | **stroke** | gerund | Elfin *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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