---
title: “The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little. Who acts: game, way. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/10/15/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story, sentence 15

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“The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.

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**Who acts:** game, way · **What happens:** go, say, keep up · **To what, where:** better, conversation · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (game, way), 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:pg11:10:15
# text = “The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	game	game	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	ccomp	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	obl	_	_
9	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	by	by	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	_
17	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
18	keeping	keep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	16	acl	_	_
19	up	up	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	conversation	conversation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
22	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | present · progressive |  |  |  | better | now |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on good=Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | game |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **keep up** | gerund | way *not said here* | the conversation |  |  |  |  | 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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**Text:** «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Project Gutenberg book 11 (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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