---
title: The dragon pressed as hard as he could, but the lid never moved. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The dragon pressed as hard as he could, but the lid never moved. Who acts: dragon. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/2/22/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 22

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The dragon pressed as hard as he could, but the lid never moved.

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**Who acts:** dragon · **What happens:** press, not move · **To what, where:** dragon

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dragon), 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:pg5615:2:22
# text = The dragon pressed as hard as he could, but the lid never moved.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
3	pressed	press	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	acl	_	_
4	as	as	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
6	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	lid	lid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
13	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	moved	move	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **press** | participle |  | the dragon *not said here* |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **move** | past | the dragon |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme 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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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