---
title: “Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice. Who acts: you, Alice. 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 83

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“Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice.

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**Who acts:** you, Alice · **What happens:** not do, mean, say · **To what, where:** purpose · **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, Alice), 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:pg11:11:83
# text = “Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	mean	mean	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	purpose	purpose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **mean** *in a quote* | present | you | purpose |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent purpose=Topic |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Alice |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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