---
title: "How ever can we wake him?" they said. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: "How ever can we wake him?" they said. Who acts: we, deliverers. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 6, 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/pg23661/6/16/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 6, sentence 16

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"How ever can we wake him?" they said.

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**Who acts:** we, deliverers · **What happens:** wake, say · **To what, where:** George · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we, deliverers), 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:pg23661:6:16
# text = "How ever can we wake him?" they said.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	6	advmod	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	wake	wake	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wake** *in a quote* | can | we | George |  |  | ever |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent he=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | deliverers *= deliverer* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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