---
title: "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. " — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. " Who acts: Skin Horse, Horse. 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 34

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"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "

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**Who acts:** Skin Horse, Horse · **What happens:** say, be · **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 (Skin Horse, Horse), 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:pg11757:1:34
# text = "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	Skin	Skin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	Horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	14	advmod	_	_
14	truthful	truthful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Skin Horse |  |  |  |  | sometimes *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | Horse |  |  |  |  | always, truthful *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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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