---
title: “She boxed the Queen’s ears—” the Rabbit began. — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · tree and pragmatics
description: “She boxed the Queen’s ears—” the Rabbit began. Who acts: Alice, Rabbit. 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/pg11/9/66/)

<!-- 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/) / 66

# Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground, sentence 66

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“She boxed the Queen’s ears—” the Rabbit began.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Alice, Rabbit · **What happens:** box, begin · **To what, where:** ears · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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 (Alice, Rabbit), 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:pg11:9:66
# text = “She boxed the Queen’s ears—” the Rabbit began.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	boxed	box	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Queen	Queen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’s	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Rabbit	Rabbit	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **box** *in a quote* | past | Alice | the Queen's ears |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **begin** | past | the Rabbit |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

<!-- .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 65](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/65/)
- next →: [sentence 67](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/67/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/)