---
title: Nurse washed his face, and told him not to be a silly little King. " — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Nurse washed his face, and told him not to be a silly little King. " Who acts: Nurse. 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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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 2, sentence 60

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Nurse washed his face, and told him not to be a silly little King. "

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**Who acts:** Nurse · **What happens:** wash, tell, not be · **To what, where:** face, Nurse, silly little King · **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 (Nurse), 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:pg23661:2:60
# text = Nurse washed his face, and told him not to be a silly little King. "
1	Nurse	nurse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	washed	wash	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
11	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wash** | past | Nurse | Nurse's face |  |  |  |  | vn floss-41.2.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent face=Patient |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Nurse *not said here* |  | Nurse |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 3 | **not** **is a** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | a silly little King |  |  |  |  | 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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