The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 3, sentence 89

He could not speak, but like all other animals, he could understand well enough when he liked.

Who acts: dragon · What happens: not speak, understand, like · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 3. 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.

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

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 speak	nsubj
2	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 speak	aux
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 speak	advmod
4	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 understand	punct
6	but	but	CCONJ	_	14 understand	cc
7	like	like	ADP	_	10 animals	case
8	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	10 animals	det
9	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 animals	amod
10	animals	animal	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 understand	obl
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 animals	punct
12	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 understand	nsubj
13	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	14 understand	aux
14	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 speak	conj
15	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	14 understand	advmod
16	enough	enough	ADV	_	15 well	advmod
17	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	19 liked	advmod
18	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 liked	nsubj
19	liked	like	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 understand	advcl
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 speak	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	other	roles by
1	not speak speech: other	could	dragon		vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	understand	could	dragon	like all other animals; well property	vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
3	like	past	dragon		vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot

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.

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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/3/89/