---
title: But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things ou… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different. Who acts: Edmund, 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 9

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different.

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**Who acts:** Edmund, boy · **What happens:** not want, learn, want, find out, be · **To what, where:** things

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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 (Edmund, 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:pg23661:14:9
# text = But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	Edmund	Edmund	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	want	want	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	learn	learn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
10	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
15	out	out	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj	_	_
18	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
19	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	different	different	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **want** | past · do-support | Edmund |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **learn** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Edmund *not said here* | things |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Topic |
| 3 | **want** | past | boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 4 | **find out** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | boy *not said here* | things |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Topic |
| 5 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | different *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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