---
title: There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. Who acts: nothing, Alice. 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/pg11/2/32/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter I. Down the Rabbit-Hole, sentence 32

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There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again.

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**Who acts:** nothing, Alice · **What happens:** be, do, begin, talk

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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 (nothing, Alice), 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:pg11:2:32
# text = There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
4	else	else	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	11	advmod	_	_
11	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	talking	talk	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	xcomp	_	_
13	again	again	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | to-infinitive | nothing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **begin** | past | Alice |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **talk** | gerund | Alice *not said here* |  |  |  | again |  | vn talk-37.5 «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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