---
title: “Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite. Who acts: Duchess. 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/pg11/10/25/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story, sentence 25

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“Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite.

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**Who acts:** Duchess · **What happens:** say · **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 (Duchess), 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:pg11:10:25
# text = “Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Duchess	Duchess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
10	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	flamingoes	flamingoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	ccomp	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	mustard	mustard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	_
14	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	15	det	_	_
15	bite	bite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Duchess |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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