---
title: “Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. Who acts: hair, Hatter. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/13/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/) / [Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/) / 13

# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** hair, Hatter · **What happens:** want, cut, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hair, Hatter), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg11:8:13
# text = “Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	wants	want	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
5	cutting	cut	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Hatter	Hatter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** *in a quote* | present | Your hair |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **cut** *not said to happen, in a quote* | gerund | Your hair *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Hatter |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/12/)
- next →: [sentence 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/14/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/)

