---
title: “Do you know why it’s called a whiting?” — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Do you know why it’s called a whiting?” Who acts: you. 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 64

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“Do you know why it’s called a whiting?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** know, call · **To what, where:** more · **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 (you), 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:pg11:11:64
# text = “Do you know why it’s called a whiting?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
8	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	ccomp	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	whiting	whiting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **call** *in a quote* | present · passive |  | more |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |

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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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