---
title: The Duchess says "It's a Cheshire cat, and that's why. — Alice in Wonderland, chapter VI, part 1: The foo… · tree and pragmatics
description: The Duchess says "It's a Cheshire cat, and that's why. Who acts: Duchess, cook, that. A sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VI, part 1: The footmen and the Duchess's kitchen» of the books course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Alice in Wonderland, chapter VI, part 1: The footmen and the Duchess's kitchen, sentence 20

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The Duchess says "It's a Cheshire cat, and that's why.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Duchess, cook, that · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** Cheshire cat · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VI, part 1: The footmen and the Duchess's kitchen» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Duchess, cook, that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:books:011-alice-ch6-part1-pig-and-pepper.lesson:20
# text = The Duchess says "It's a Cheshire cat, and that's why.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = books
# lesson = 011-alice-ch6-part1-pig-and-pepper.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Duchess	duchess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
5	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
6	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	Cheshire	Cheshire	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=9:compound|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
9	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
13	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	conj	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | the Duchess |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | cook | a Cheshire cat |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | that |  |  |  |  | why *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:books:011-alice-ch6-part1-pig-and-pepper.lesson:20`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R8-pos-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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