---
title: “What _can_ all that green stuff be?” said Alice. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “What _can_ all that green stuff be?” said Alice. Who acts: Alice. 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 76

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“What \_can\_ all that green stuff be?” said Alice.

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**Who acts:** Alice · **What happens:** \_, be, say · **To what, where:** green stuff · **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 (Alice), 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:pg11:6:76
# text = “What _can_ all that green stuff be?” said Alice.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	_	_	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
6	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	9	det:predet	_	_
7	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
8	green	green	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	stuff	stuff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
10	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **\_** *in a quote* | can |  | all green stuff |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Alice |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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