---
title: “Hold your tongue, Ma!” said the young Crab, a little snappishly. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Hold your tongue, Ma!” said the young Crab, a little snappishly. Who acts: young Crab. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/4/77/)

<!-- 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 III. A Caucus-Race and a Long…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/4/) / 77

# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale, sentence 77

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Hold your tongue, Ma!” said the young Crab, a little snappishly.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** young Crab · **What happens:** hold, say · **To what, where:** tongue · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (young Crab), 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:pg11:4:77
# text = “Hold your tongue, Ma!” said the young Crab, a little snappishly.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
3	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	Ma	Ma	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	Crab	Crab	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	obl:unmarked	_	_
16	snappishly	snappishly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | your tongue |  |  |  | Ma *vocative* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tongue=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the young Crab |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent 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 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/4/76/)
- next →: [sentence 78](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/4/78/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/4/)