---
title: I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was. Who acts: I. 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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# The Book of Dragons, Kind Little Edmund\], sentence 56

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I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** think, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I), 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:pg23661:14:56
# text = I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	ccomp	_	_
6	before	before	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	5	obl	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	kindhearted	kindhearted	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
11	Edmund	Edmund	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	appos	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present · perfect | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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