---
title: He sat down on the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat down on the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock. Who acts: boy. 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 85

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He sat down on the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock.

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**Who acts:** boy · **What happens:** sit down, wait · **To what, where:** brass doorstep

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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 (boy), 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:pg23661:14:85
# text = He sat down on the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	brass	brass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	doorstep	doorstep	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	waited	wait	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	till	till	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	o'clock	o'clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	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 | **sit down** | past | boy |  |  | the brass doorstep |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on doorstep=Location |
| 2 | **wait** | past | boy *not said here* |  |  |  | till three o'clock |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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