---
title: “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. Who acts: you, Cat, we. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VI. Pig and Pepper, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VI. Pig and Pepper, sentence 107

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“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here.

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**Who acts:** you, Cat, we · **What happens:** not help, say, be · **To what, where:** that · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VI. Pig and Pepper. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Cat, we), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg11:420`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg11:7:107
# text = “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	obj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	Cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
15	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	_
16	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
17	’re	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	all	all	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	mad	mad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	parataxis	_	_
20	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	19	advmod	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **help** *in a quote* | can | you | that |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Cat |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | we |  |  | here |  | all, mad *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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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