---
title: The Dragon fell on the Manticora at once, and the mail was no defense. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: The Dragon fell on the Manticora at once, and the mail was no defense. Who acts: Dragon, mail. 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/pg23661/2/47/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 2, sentence 47

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The Dragon fell on the Manticora at once, and the mail was no defense.

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**Who acts:** Dragon, mail · **What happens:** fall, be · **To what, where:** defense

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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 (Dragon, mail), 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:pg23661:2:47
# text = The Dragon fell on the Manticora at once, and the mail was no defense.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Dragon	Dragon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Manticora	Manticora	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	mail	mail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	15	det	_	_
15	defense	defense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | the Dragon |  |  |  |  | on the Manticora | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on manticora=Location |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the mail | no defense |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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