---
title: Can they be John and Michael? — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: Can they be John and Michael? Who acts: figures. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XI. WENDY’S STORY, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter XI. WENDY’S STORY, sentence 65

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Can they be John and Michael?

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**Who acts:** figures · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** John

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XI. WENDY’S STORY. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (figures), 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:pg16:12:65
# text = Can they be John and Michael?
1	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	cop	_	_
4	John	John	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	Michael	Michael	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | can | figures *= figure* | John and Michael |  |  |  |  | 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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