---
title: John was treading the air mechanically, and Michael without knowing… — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: John was treading the air mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to float was floating. Who acts: John, Michael. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT, sentence 192

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John was treading the air mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to float was floating.

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**Who acts:** John, Michael · **What happens:** tread, know, float · **To what, where:** air · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (John, Michael), 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:pg16:701`): 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:pg16:5:192
# text = John was treading the air mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to float was floating.
1	John	John	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	treading	tread	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	mechanically	mechanically	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
9	Michael	Michael	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
10	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	knowing	know	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	16	advcl	_	_
12	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	float	float	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	floating	float	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tread** | past · progressive | John | the air |  |  |  | mechanically *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location air=Theme |
| 2 | **know** | gerund | Michael *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **float** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **float** | past · progressive | Michael |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «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:** 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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