---
title: “A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looki… — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. Who acts: knot. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale, sentence 66

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“A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her.

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**Who acts:** knot · **What happens:** say, make, look · **To what, where:** Alice · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (knot), 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:pg11:4:66
# text = “A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	knot	knot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	10	advmod	_	_
10	ready	ready	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	ccomp	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	12	obj	_	_
14	useful	useful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
18	anxiously	anxiously	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
19	about	about	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | a knot |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **make** | to-infinitive | a knot *not said here* | Alice |  |  |  | useful *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset herself=Product |
| 3 | **look** | gerund | a knot *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about Alice; anxiously *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent about she=Theme |

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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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