---
title: “I can see you’re trying to invent something!” — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “I can see you’re trying to invent something!” Who acts: Alice, you. 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 99

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“I can see you’re trying to invent something!”

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**Who acts:** Alice, you · **What happens:** see, be, try, invent · **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 (Alice, you), 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:pg11:6:99
# text = “I can see you’re trying to invent something!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’re	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
7	trying	try	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	xcomp	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	invent	invent	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** *in a quote* | can | Alice |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **does** *in a quote* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **try** *in a quote* | gerund | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **invent** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | something |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Result |

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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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