---
title: The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew. Who acts: children, wings. 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/pg23661/6/8/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 6, sentence 8

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The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew.

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**Who acts:** children, wings · **What happens:** hear, fly, rattle · **To what, where:** rattle

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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 (children, wings), 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:pg23661:6:8
# text = The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	rattle	rattle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	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 | **hear** | could | the children | the rattle of children's wings |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer rattle=Stimulus |
| 2 | **fly** | past | children *= child* |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **rattle** |  | children's wings |  |  |  |  |  | nom rattle «event intransitive»: of=agent |

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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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