---
title: “Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wild… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about. 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 20

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“Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.

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**Who acts:** Mock Turtle · **What happens:** turn, cry, caper · **To what, where:** somersault · **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), 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:pg11:11:20
# text = “Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Turn	turn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	somersault	somersault	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	Mock	Mock	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	Turtle	Turtle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	capering	caper	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
16	wildly	wildly	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | a somersault |  |  |  | in the sea | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP PP.recipient PP.theme»: agent=Agent somersault=Patient in sea=Topic |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the Mock Turtle |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **caper** | gerund | the Mock Turtle *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=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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