---
title: Peter began to cry. — The Tale of Peter Rabbit · tree and pragmatics
description: Peter began to cry. Who acts: Peter. A sentence of «The Tale of Peter Rabbit» by Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Frederick Warne, sentence 40

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Peter began to cry.

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**Who acts:** Peter · **What happens:** begin, cry

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This is a sentence of «The Tale of Peter Rabbit» by Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Peter), 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:pg14838:2:40
# text = Peter began to cry.
1	Peter	Peter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	cry	cry	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | Peter |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | to-infinitive | Peter *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=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 Tale of Peter Rabbit» by Beatrix Potter, Project Gutenberg book 14838 (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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