---
title: The executioner's argument: you can't cut off a head unless there is… — Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 2: The Q… · tree and pragmatics
description: The executioner's argument: you can't cut off a head unless there is a body to cut it off from. Who acts: you, body, executioner. A sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 2: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (a head without a body)» of the books course of Mova's primary school with
---

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# Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 2: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (a head without a body), sentence 24

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The executioner's argument: you can't cut off a head unless there is a body to cut it off from.

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**Who acts:** you, body, executioner · **What happens:** not cut off, be, cut off, argue · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter VIII, part 2: The Queen's Croquet-Ground (a head without a body)» 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 (you, body, executioner), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:books:016-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-2.lesson:24
# text = The executioner's argument: you can't cut off a head unless there is a body to cut it off from.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = books
# lesson = 016-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-2.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	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	executioner	executioner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	argument	argument	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
10	off	off	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	unless	unless	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	there	there	PRON	EX	_	15	expl	_	_
15	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	acl	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	_
21	off	off	ADP	RP	_	19	compound:prt	_	_
22	from	from	ADP	IN	_	19	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **cut off** | can | you | a head |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |
| 2 | **be** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | a body |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **cut off** | to-infinitive | a body *not said here* | head |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector it=Eventuality |
| 4 | **argue** |  | the executioner |  |  |  |  |  | nom argument «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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**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:016-alice-the-queens-croquet-ground-2.lesson:24`.

**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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