---
title: (“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.) — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: (“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.) Who acts: March Hare, dinner. 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/pg11/8/64/)

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# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII. A Mad Tea-Party, sentence 64

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(“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

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**Who acts:** March Hare, dinner · **What happens:** wish, be, say · **To what, where:** dinner, whisper · **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 (March Hare, dinner), 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:pg11:8:64
# text = (“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)
1	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	March	March	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Hare	Hare	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	itself	itself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	whisper	whisper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | the March Hare *= hare* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* | past | dinner |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the March Hare |  | dinner | a whisper |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to itself=Recipient |

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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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