---
title: There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure i… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice the children read: THIS WAY TO THE NORTH POLE. Who acts: signpost, children. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/7/96/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 7, sentence 96

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There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice the children read: THIS WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.

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**Who acts:** signpost, children · **What happens:** be, read, signpost, letter · **To what, where:** WAY, NORTH POLE, signpost, silvery snow, pure ice

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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 (signpost, children), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg23661:679`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg23661:7:96
# text = There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice the children read: THIS WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	signpost	signpost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	silvery	silvery	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
10	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	letters	letter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	pure	pure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	ice	ice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	read	read	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
20	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	22	punct	_	_
21	THIS	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	22	det	_	_
22	WAY	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
23	TO	to	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
24	THE	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
25	NORTH	North	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	26	compound	_	_
26	POLE	Pole	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	nmod	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a signpost of silvery snow |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **read** | past | the children | this WAY | the NORTH POLE | signpost |  | in letters of pure ice | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent way=Topic to pole=Recipient |
| 3 | **signpost** |  |  | silvery snow |  |  |  |  | nom signpost «communication transitive»: of=patient |
| 4 | **letter** |  |  | pure ice |  |  |  |  | nom letter «communication transitive»: of=patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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