---
title: “Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise. Who acts: fish. 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 81

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“Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

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**Who acts:** fish · **What happens:** not say, intonate · **To what, where:** tone, great surprise · **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 (fish), 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:pg11:11:81
# text = “Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
5	really	really	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	tone	tone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* | would | fish |  |  | a tone of great surprise |  |  | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP PP.manner»: agent=Agent in tone=Manner |
| 2 | **intonate** |  |  | great surprise |  |  |  |  | nom tone «communication transitive»: of=patient |

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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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