---
title: We can't go back on our word like this. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: We can't go back on our word like this. Who acts: We, our. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 4, 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/pg23661/4/117/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 4, sentence 117

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We can't go back on our word like this.

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**Who acts:** We, our · **What happens:** not go back, word · **To what, where:** word

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, our), 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:pg23661:4:117
# text = We can't go back on our word like this.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	back	back	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	like	like	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **go back** | can | We |  |  | our word like this |  |  | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **word** |  | our |  |  |  |  | like this | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent like=obl |

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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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