---
title: It is because dragons can get their tails into the fourth dimension… — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: It is because dragons can get their tails into the fourth dimension and hold on there, and when you can do that everything else is easy. Who acts: dragon, you, everything. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 9, sentence 43

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It is because dragons can get their tails into the fourth dimension and hold on there, and when you can do that everything else is easy.

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**Who acts:** dragon, you, everything · **What happens:** be, hold on, do · **To what, where:** fourth dimension, that

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dragon, you, everything), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg23661:834`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg23661:9:43
# text = It is because dragons can get their tails into the fourth dimension and hold on there, and when you can do that everything else is easy.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	dragons	dragon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	tails	tail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	fourth	fourth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	12	amod	_	_
12	dimension	dimension	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	advmod	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
19	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	22	advmod	_	_
20	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
21	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
22	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	27	advcl	_	_
23	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	22	obj	_	_
24	everything	everything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	27	nsubj	_	_
25	else	else	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
26	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
27	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | can · present | dragon |  |  | the fourth dimension |  | get *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **hold on** | infinitive | dragon *not said here* |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **do** | can | you | that |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality |
| 4 | **is** | present | everything |  |  |  |  | easy *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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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