---
title: We don't want any expense spared. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: We don't want any expense spared. Who acts: We, expense. 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 68

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We don't want any expense spared.

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**Who acts:** We, expense · **What happens:** not want, spare · **To what, where:** expense

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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 (We, expense), 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:pg23661:9:68
# text = We don't want any expense spared.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	want	want	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	det	_	_
6	expense	expense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	spared	spare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **want** | present · do-support | We | any expense |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **spare** *not said to happen* | participle | any expense *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent |

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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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