---
title: Instant obedience was the only safe thing. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: Instant obedience was the only safe thing. Who acts: Instant obedience. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME, sentence 12

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Instant obedience was the only safe thing.

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**Who acts:** Instant obedience · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** only safe thing

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Instant obedience), 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:pg16:17:12
# text = Instant obedience was the only safe thing.
1	Instant	instant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	obedience	obedience	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	only	only	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Instant obedience | the only safe thing |  |  |  |  | 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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