---
title: “I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone. 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 84

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“I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.

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**Who acts:** Mock Turtle · **What happens:** mean, say, reply · **To what, where:** offended tone · **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:pg11:11:84
# text = “I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	mean	mean	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	parataxis	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	Mock	Mock	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	Turtle	Turtle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	offended	offended	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	tone	tone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** *in a quote* | present | the Mock Turtle *= turtle* |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | the Mock Turtle *= turtle* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the Mock Turtle |  |  | a offended tone |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: 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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