---
title: “But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked. Who acts: Dormouse. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter XI. Who Stole the Tarts?, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/12/72/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XI. Who Stole the Tarts?, sentence 72

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“But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked.

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**Who acts:** Dormouse · **What happens:** say, ask · **To what, where:** one · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter XI. Who Stole the Tarts?. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dormouse), 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:pg11:12:72
# text = “But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
4	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Dormouse	Dormouse	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	jury	jury	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
14	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past · do-support | the Dormouse |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  | one |  |  |  | of the jury | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V PP.recipient how S»: agent=Agent of jury=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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