---
title: Why couldn't they stop and talk to me?" — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: Why couldn't they stop and talk to me?" Who acts: strangers. 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/pg11757/1/143/)

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# The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 143

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Why couldn't they stop and talk to me?"

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**Who acts:** strangers · **What happens:** not stop, talk · **To what, where:** me

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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 (strangers), 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:pg11757:1:143
# text = Why couldn't they stop and talk to me?"
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	stop	stop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **stop** | could | strangers *= stranger* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **talk** | infinitive | strangers *= stranger* *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to i=Co-Agent |

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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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