---
title: Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday. Who acts: Uncle, Tomorrow. 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/pg23661/4/62/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 4, sentence 62

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Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday.

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**Who acts:** Uncle, Tomorrow · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** birthday · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Uncle, Tomorrow), 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:pg23661:4:62
# text = Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	Uncle	Uncle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	James	James	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	flat	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Tomorrow	tomorrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	birthday	birthday	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Uncle |  |  |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Tomorrow | the dragon's birthday |  |  |  |  | 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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