---
title: You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. Who acts: You, use. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter V. Advice from a Caterpillar, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter V. Advice from a Caterpillar, sentence 104

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You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it.

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**Who acts:** You, use · **What happens:** be, deny · **To what, where:** serpent, use

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter V. Advice from a Caterpillar. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, use), 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:pg11:6:104
# text = You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it.
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’re	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	serpent	serpent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	8	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	10	det	_	_
10	use	use	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	denying	deny	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **does** | present | You | a serpent |  |  |  |  | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot serpent=Theme |
| 2 | **deny** | gerund | no use *not said here* | use |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V NP to be NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

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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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