---
title: “The dear old days when I could fly!” — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “The dear old days when I could fly!” Who acts: dear old days. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP, sentence 148

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“The dear old days when I could fly!”

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**Who acts:** dear old days · **What happens:** fly

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dear old days), 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:pg16:18:148
# text = “The dear old days when I could fly!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
6	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	9	mark	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** *in a quote* | could | the dear old days |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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