---
title: “Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a rea… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a real Turtle.” Who acts: Mock Turtle. 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/pg11/10/85/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story, sentence 85

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“Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a real Turtle.”

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**Who acts:** Mock Turtle · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** last, real Turtle · **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 (Mock Turtle), 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:pg11:10:85
# text = “Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a real Turtle.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	Mock	Mock	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	Turtle	Turtle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	deep	deep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	sigh	sigh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
17	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	22	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	real	real	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	Turtle	turtle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	22	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	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 Mock Turtle |  |  | last |  | once *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | the Mock Turtle *= turtle* | a real Turtle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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