---
title: The great question certainly was, what? — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: The great question certainly was, what? A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter IV. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter IV. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill, sentence 121

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The great question certainly was, what?

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**What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter IV. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg11:5:121
# text = The great question certainly was, what?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  |  |  |  |  | certainly *property* | tree rules |

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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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