---
title: Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods. Who acts: Jane, George, hundreds. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/33/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 8, sentence 33

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Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods.

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**Who acts:** Jane, George, hundreds · **What happens:** say, be · **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 (Jane, George, hundreds), 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:pg23661:8:33
# text = Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods.
1	Jane	Jane	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	George	George	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	straight	straight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	ccomp	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	ramrods	ramrod	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Jane |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | George |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | past | hundreds *= hundred* |  |  |  |  | as ramrods; straight *property* | tree rules |

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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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