---
title: He told the boys at school about the cockatrice and his wonderful tr… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: He told the boys at school about the cockatrice and his wonderful true tales, and the boys liked the stories; but when he told the master he was caned for untruthfulness. Who acts: trice, boys. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Kind Little Edmund], with its dependency tree and the pr
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/14/72/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Kind Little Edmund\], sentence 72

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He told the boys at school about the cockatrice and his wonderful true tales, and the boys liked the stories; but when he told the master he was caned for untruthfulness.

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**Who acts:** trice, boys · **What happens:** tell, like, cane · **To what, where:** boys, school, stories, master, trice · **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 (trice, boys), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg23661:1587`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg23661:14:72
# text = He told the boys at school about the cockatrice and his wonderful true tales, and the boys liked the stories; but when he told the master he was caned for untruthfulness.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	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	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	school	school	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	about	about	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	cockatrice	cockatrice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
12	wonderful	wonderful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	conj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	liked	like	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obj	_	_
22	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	31	punct	_	_
23	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	31	cc	_	_
24	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	26	advmod	_	_
25	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	26	nsubj	_	_
26	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	31	advcl	_	_
27	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	28	det	_	_
28	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	iobj	_	_
29	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	31	nsubj:pass	_	_
30	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	31	aux:pass	_	_
31	caned	cane	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
32	for	for	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
33	untruthfulness	untruthfulness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	31	obl	_	_
34	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | trice |  | the boys | school |  | about the cockatrice and trice's wonderful true tales | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent boy=Recipient about cockatrice=Topic |
| 2 | **like** | past | the boys | the stories |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot story=Theme |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | trice |  | the master |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent master=Recipient |
| 4 | **cane** | past · passive |  | trice |  |  |  | for untruthfulness | vn spank-18.3 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 5 | **tell** |  | trice |  |  |  |  |  | nom tale «communication intransitive»: poss=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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