---
title: “It was like this,” Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter’s crow. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “It was like this,” Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter’s crow. Who acts: crow, Wendy. 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 177

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“It was like this,” Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter’s crow.

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**Who acts:** crow, Wendy · **What happens:** be, say, try, imitate · **To what, where:** crow · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (crow, Wendy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg16:2390`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg16:18:177
# text = “It was like this,” Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter’s crow.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	ccomp	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	Wendy	Wendy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	trying	try	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	imitate	imitate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	Peter	Peter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	’s	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	crow	crow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past | crow |  |  |  |  | like this | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Wendy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **try** | gerund | Wendy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **imitate** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Wendy *not said here* | Peter's crow |  |  |  |  | vn patent-101 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent crow=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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