---
title: Then the game begins, and it is the strangest croquet ever: live hed… — Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 1: The Q… · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the game begins, and it is the strangest croquet ever: live hedgehogs for balls, live flamingoes for mallets, and soldiers bent double for the arches. Who acts: game, soldiers. A sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 1: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (painting the roses re
---

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# Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 1: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (painting the roses red), sentence 11

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Then the game begins, and it is the strangest croquet ever: live hedgehogs for balls, live flamingoes for mallets, and soldiers bent double for the arches.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** game, soldiers · **What happens:** begin, be, bent · **To what, where:** strangest croquet

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 1: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (painting the roses red)» 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 (game, soldiers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:books:015-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-1.lesson:11
# text = Then the game begins, and it is the strangest croquet ever: live hedgehogs for balls, live flamingoes for mallets, and soldiers bent double for the arches.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = books
# lesson = 015-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-1.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): no change
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	game	game	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	begins	begin	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	strangest	strange	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	11	amod	_	_
11	croquet	croquet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
12	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	11	advmod	_	_
13	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
14	live	live	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	hedgehogs	hedgehog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	appos	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	balls	ball	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nmod	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	live	live	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	flamingoes	flamingoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	conj	_	_
21	for	for	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	mallets	mallet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	_
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
25	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	26	nsubj	_	_
26	bent	bent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	conj	_	_
27	double	double	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
28	for	for	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
29	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	30	det	_	_
30	arches	arch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	26	obl	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **begin** | present | the game |  |  |  | then |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is a** | present | game | the strangest croquet |  |  | ever |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **bent** | participle | soldiers |  |  |  |  | for the arches; double *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:015-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-1.lesson:11`.

**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): no change. **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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