---
title: But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white silence bett… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white silence better. Who acts: muttering, Jane. 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 98

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But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white silence better.

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**Who acts:** muttering, Jane · **What happens:** be, like · **To what, where:** brown silence, white silence

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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 (muttering, Jane), 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:pg23661:8:98
# text = But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white silence better.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	silence	silence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	liked	like	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	silence	silence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	14	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | muttering | a brown silence |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **like** | past · perfect | Jane | the white silence |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot silence=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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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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