---
title: I needn’t be afraid of them!” — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: I needn’t be afraid of them!” Who acts: I. A sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground, 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/pg11/9/29/)

<!-- 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 VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/) / 29

# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground, sentence 29

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
I needn’t be afraid of them!”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** need, not be

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg11:9:29
# text = I needn’t be afraid of them!”
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	need	need	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	cop	_	_
5	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **need** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **not** **is** *not said to happen* | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of name; afraid *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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 28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/28/)
- next →: [sentence 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/30/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/)