---
title: On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's sto… — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming. Who acts: Rabbit, effect. 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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# The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 13

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On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

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**Who acts:** Rabbit, effect · **What happens:** sit, wedge, be · **To what, where:** top

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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 (Rabbit, effect), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg11757:5`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg11757:1:13
# text = On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	Christmas	Christmas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	30	advcl	_	_
8	wedged	wedge	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	xcomp	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Boy	Boy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	's	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	stocking	stocking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	sprig	sprig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	holly	holly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	_
23	between	between	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	25	nmod:poss	_	_
25	paws	paw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
27	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	28	det	_	_
28	effect	effect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	nsubj	_	_
29	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	30	cop	_	_
30	charming	charming	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	30	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | Rabbit |  |  |  |  | with a sprig of holly between Rabbit's paws | tree rules |
| 2 | **wedge** | participle | Rabbit *not said here* |  |  | the top of the Boy's stocking |  |  | vn funnel-9.3-1-1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent in top=Trajectory |
| 3 | **is** | past | the effect |  |  |  | morning | charming *property* | 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:** «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Project Gutenberg book 11757 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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