---
title: “May I sit in Peter’s chair, as he is not here?” — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “May I sit in Peter’s chair, as he is not here?” Who acts: rule, John. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME, sentence 31

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“May I sit in Peter’s chair, as he is not here?”

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**Who acts:** rule, John · **What happens:** sit, not be · **To what, where:** chair

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rule, John), 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:pg16:11:31
# text = “May I sit in Peter’s chair, as he is not here?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	May	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sit	sit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	Peter	Peter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’s	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	chair	chair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** *in a quote* | may | rule |  |  | Peter's chair |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in chair=Location |
| 2 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | present | John |  |  |  |  | here *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:** «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Project Gutenberg book 16 (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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