---
title: “It was the _best_ butter,” the March Hare meekly replied. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “It was the _best_ butter,” the March Hare meekly replied. Who acts: butter, March Hare. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/8/33/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party, sentence 33

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“It was the \_best\_ butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.

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**Who acts:** butter, March Hare · **What happens:** be, reply · **To what, where:** best butter · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (butter, March Hare), 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:pg11:8:33
# text = “It was the _best_ butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
5	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	8	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	8	punct	_	_
8	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	March	March	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	Hare	Hare	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	meekly	meekly	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | butter | the best butter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the March Hare |  |  |  |  | meekly *property* | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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