---
title: The Hatter was the first to break the silence. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: The Hatter was the first to break the silence. Who acts: 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.
---

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party, sentence 28

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The Hatter was the first to break the silence.

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**Who acts:** Hatter · **What happens:** be, break · **To what, where:** silence

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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 (Hatter), 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:pg11:8:28
# text = The Hatter was the first to break the silence.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Hatter	Hatter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	silence	silence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the Hatter |  |  |  |  | first *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **break** | to-infinitive | the Hatter *not said here* | the silence |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer silence=Patient |

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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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