---
title: "Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit. — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: "Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit. Who acts: you, furry rabbit. A sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening, 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/pg11757/1/108/)

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# The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 108

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"Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit.

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**Who acts:** you, furry rabbit · **What happens:** hop, ask · **To what, where:** hind legs · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, furry rabbit), 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:pg11757:1:108
# text = "Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	hop	hop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	hind	hind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	furry	furry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	rabbit	rabbit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hop** *in a quote* | can | you |  |  | your hind legs |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on leg=Trajectory |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the furry rabbit |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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:** «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Project Gutenberg book 11757 (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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