---
title: “He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxiou… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried. Who acts: reason, Alice, experiment. 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/pg11/10/24/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story, sentence 24

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“He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried.

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**Who acts:** reason, Alice, experiment · **What happens:** bite, reply, not feel, have, try · **To what, where:** all · **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 (reason, Alice, experiment), 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:pg11:10:24
# text = “He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	bite	bite	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	cautiously	cautiously	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	feeling	feel	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
13	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	12	obj	_	_
15	anxious	anxious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	advcl	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	experiment	experiment	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
20	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bite** *in a quote* | might | reason |  |  |  |  |  | vn swat-18.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | Alice |  |  |  |  | cautiously *property* | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **feel** | gerund | Alice *not said here* | all |  |  |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent all=Theme |
| 4 | **have** | to-infinitive | Alice *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **try** | past | the experiment |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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**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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