---
title: “What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice. Who acts: Alice, King. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/13/7/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/) / [Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/13/) / 7

# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Alice, King · **What happens:** know, say · **To what, where:** Alice · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Alice, King), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg11:13:7
# text = “What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** *in a quote* | present · do-support | Alice |  |  |  |  | about this business | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the King |  | Alice |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to alice=Recipient clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/13/6/)
- next →: [sentence 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/13/8/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter XII. Alice’s Evidence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/13/)