---
title: There aren't any robins, and there aren't any leaves. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: There aren't any robins, and there aren't any leaves. Who acts: robins. 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 44

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There aren't any robins, and there aren't any leaves.

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**Who acts:** robins · **What happens:** not be

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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 (robins), 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:pg23661:8:44
# text = There aren't any robins, and there aren't any leaves.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
4	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	5	det	_	_
5	robins	robin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	9	expl	_	_
9	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
11	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	12	det	_	_
12	leaves	leaf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **does** | present | any robins |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: 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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