---
title: Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners. Who acts: grouse. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 8, sentence 123

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Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.

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**Who acts:** grouse · **What happens:** speak, have · **To what, where:** grouse, pretty manners · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (grouse), 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:pg23661:8:123
# text = Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.
1	Thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	grouse	grouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
7	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
9	very	very	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	manners	manners	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past |  | the grouse |  |  |  | thus *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | the grouse | pretty manners |  |  |  | certainly *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent manners=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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