---
title: “It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!” — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!” Who acts: watch, o’clock. 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 38

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“It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!”

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**Who acts:** watch, o’clock · **What happens:** tell, not tell, be · **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 (watch, o’clock), 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:pg11:8:38
# text = “It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	month	month	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
14	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	ccomp	_	_
15	o’clock	o'clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | watch |  |  |  | day |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present · do-support | watch *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | o’clock |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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