---
title: I wish we had a few Manticoras here now. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: I wish we had a few Manticoras here now. Who acts: I, we. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 2, 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/pg23661/2/36/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 2, sentence 36

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I wish we had a few Manticoras here now.

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**Who acts:** I, we · **What happens:** wish, have · **To what, where:** few Manticoras · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, we), 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:pg23661:2:36
# text = I wish we had a few Manticoras here now.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	Manticoras	Manticoras	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
9	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | we | a few Manticoras |  | here | now |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent manticoras=Patient |

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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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