---
title: Whatever shall we do?" — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: Whatever shall we do?" Who acts: we. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/52/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Book of Dragons](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/) / [Opening, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/) / 52

# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 8, sentence 52

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Whatever shall we do?"

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** do · **To what, where:** Whatever

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (we), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg23661:8:52
# text = Whatever shall we do?"
1	Whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	obj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | shall | we | Whatever |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whatever=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 51](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/51/)
- next →: [sentence 53](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/53/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/8/)