---
title: “Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully. Who acts: Boy. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter II. THE SHADOW, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter II. THE SHADOW, sentence 48

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“Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.

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**Who acts:** Boy · **What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** Michael

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter II. THE SHADOW. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Boy), 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:pg16:3:48
# text = “Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Michael	Michael	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
11	too	too	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	hopefully	hopefully	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | Boy or girl |  | Michael |  |  | hopefully *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent michael=Recipient |

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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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