---
title: But at teatime another thing happened. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: But at teatime another thing happened. Who acts: thing. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 5, sentence 45

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But at teatime another thing happened.

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**Who acts:** thing · **What happens:** happen · **To what, where:** teatime

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thing), 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:pg23661:5:45
# text = But at teatime another thing happened.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	teatime	teatime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	5	det	_	_
5	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past | another thing |  |  | teatime |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme at teatime=Location |

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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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