---
title: (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy _curtseying_ as you’re… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy _curtseying_ as you’re falling through the air! Who acts: Ma’am, fancy _, you. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter I. Down the Rabbit-Hole, 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/pg11/2/27/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter I. Down the Rabbit-Hole, sentence 27

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
(and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy \_curtseying\_ as you’re falling through the air!

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Ma’am, fancy \_, you · **What happens:** try, curtsey, speak, be, fall · **To what, where:** air · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter I. Down the Rabbit-Hole. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ma’am, fancy \_, you), 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:pg11:2:27
# text = (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy _curtseying_ as you’re falling through the air!
1	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	curtsey	curtsey	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	fancy	fancy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	_	_	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	curtseying	curtsey	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	_	_	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’re	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	conj	_	_
18	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	conj	_	_
19	through	through	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | Ma’am *= ma'am* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **curtsey** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Ma’am *= ma'am* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn curtsey-40.3.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | Ma’am *= ma'am* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **curtsey** | gerund | fancy \_ |  |  |  |  |  | vn curtsey-40.3.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **does** | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 6 | **fall** | gerund | fancy \_ *not said here* |  |  | the air |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through air=Location |

<!-- .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.

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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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