---
title: And he never once interrupted the cockatrice to ask why. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And he never once interrupted the cockatrice to ask why. Who acts: side. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Kind Little Edmund], 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/pg23661/14/174/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Kind Little Edmund\], sentence 174

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And he never once interrupted the cockatrice to ask why.

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**Who acts:** side · **What happens:** not interrupt, ask · **To what, where:** cockatrice

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Kind Little Edmund\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (side), 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:pg23661:14:174
# text = And he never once interrupted the cockatrice to ask why.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	advmod	_	_
5	interrupted	interrupt	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	cockatrice	cockatrice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
10	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **interrupt** | past | side | the cockatrice |  |  |  | once *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | to-infinitive | side *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: 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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