---
title: “I’ve something important to say!” — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “I’ve something important to say!” Who acts: Caterpillar, something. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/6/23/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter V. Advice from a Caterpillar, sentence 23

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“I’ve something important to say!”

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**Who acts:** Caterpillar, something · **What happens:** have, say · **To what, where:** something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Caterpillar, something), 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:pg11:6:23
# text = “I’ve something important to say!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’ve	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obj	_	_
5	important	important	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | present | the Caterpillar *= caterpillar* | something |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | to-infinitive | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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