---
title: "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. " — The Velveteen Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. " Who acts: It, Skin 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 37

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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "

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**Who acts:** It, Skin Horse · **What happens:** not happen, say · **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 (It, Skin 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:pg11757:1:37
# text = "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	happen	happen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
6	all	all	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	said	say	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	Skin	Skin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	Horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **happen** *in a quote* | present · do-support | It |  |  |  |  | once *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Skin Horse |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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.

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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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