---
title: And the Northern Lights still seemed some way off. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And the Northern Lights still seemed some way off. Who acts: Northern Lights. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 7, sentence 87

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And the Northern Lights still seemed some way off.

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**Who acts:** Northern Lights · **What happens:** seem

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Northern Lights), 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:pg23661:7:87
# text = And the Northern Lights still seemed some way off.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	Northern	northern	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	Lights	light	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	still	still	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	8	det	_	_
8	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	off	off	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | past | the Northern Lights |  |  |  | still | off *property* | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |

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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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