---
title: This inscription would enable anyone who was wise enough to interpre… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: This inscription would enable anyone who was wise enough to interpret it to find out how the Dragon could be destroyed. Who acts: inscription. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon of the North(2), sentence 12

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This inscription would enable anyone who was wise enough to interpret it to find out how the Dragon could be destroyed.

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**Who acts:** inscription · **What happens:** enable, be, interpret, find out, destroy · **To what, where:** anyone, inscription, Dragon

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (inscription), 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:pg640:5:12
# text = This inscription would enable anyone who was wise enough to interpret it to find out how the Dragon could be destroyed.
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	inscription	inscription	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	enable	enable	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	anyone	anyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	4	obj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	interpret	interpret	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	csubj	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	_
15	out	out	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	21	advmod	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	Dragon	Dragon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	21	nsubj:pass	_	_
19	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
20	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	aux:pass	_	_
21	destroyed	destroy	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **enable** | would | this inscription | anyone |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | enough, wise *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **interpret** | to-infinitive |  | inscription |  |  |  |  | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 4 | **find out** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **destroy** | could · passive |  | the Dragon |  |  |  |  | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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