---
title: The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choke… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this:— Who acts: Mock Turtle. 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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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter X. The Lobster Quadrille, sentence 127

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The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this:—

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**Who acts:** Mock Turtle · **What happens:** sigh, begin, choke, sing · **To what, where:** voice, this

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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), 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:pg11:11:127
# text = The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this:—
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	Mock	Mock	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	Turtle	Turtle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sighed	sigh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	deeply	deeply	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
13	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	14	advmod	_	_
14	choked	choke	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	parataxis	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	sobs	sob	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	conj	_	_
20	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sigh** | past | the Mock Turtle |  |  |  |  | deeply *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **begin** | past | the Mock Turtle *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 3 | **choke** | participle |  |  |  | a voice |  | with sobs; sometimes *property* | vn fill-9.8 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent with sob=Theme |
| 4 | **sing** *speech: express* | to-infinitive |  | this |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location this=Theme |

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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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