---
title: He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice. Who acts: 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 2

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He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice.

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**Who acts:** Turtle · **What happens:** look, try, speak, choke · **To what, where:** voice · **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 (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:pg11:11:2
# text = He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	minute	minute	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	17	nummod	_	_
17	sobs	sob	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	_
18	choked	choke	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
19	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | Turtle |  |  |  |  | at Alice | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at alice=Theme |
| 2 | **try** | past | Turtle *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Turtle *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **choke** | past | Turtle *not said here* | Turtle's voice |  |  | minute |  | vn fill-9.8 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme voice=Destination |

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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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