---
title: “I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle. Who acts: Mock Turtle, way. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter X. The Lobster Quadrille, 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/pg11/11/107/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter X. The Lobster Quadrille, sentence 107

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“I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle.

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**Who acts:** Mock Turtle, way · **What happens:** like, have, explain, say · **To what, where:** way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter X. The Lobster Quadrille. 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, 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:pg11:11:107
# text = “I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	explained	explain	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	Mock	Mock	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	Turtle	Turtle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **like** *in a quote* | should | the Mock Turtle *= turtle* |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **have** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | the Mock Turtle *= turtle* *not said here* | way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **explain** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | participle | way *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Mock Turtle |  |  |  |  |  | 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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