---
title: These were the verses the White Rabbit read:— — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: These were the verses the White Rabbit read:— Who acts: These, verses. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence, 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/pg11/13/52/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence, sentence 52

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These were the verses the White Rabbit read:—

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**Who acts:** These, verses · **What happens:** be, read · **To what, where:** verses

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (These, verses), 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:pg11:13:52
# text = These were the verses the White Rabbit read:—
1	These	this	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	verses	verse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	White	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	Rabbit	Rabbit	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	read	read	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | These | the verses |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **read** | past | the verses |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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