---
title: It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mer… — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid. Who acts: star, children. 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 45

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It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.

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**Who acts:** star, children · **What happens:** irritate, not see · **To what, where:** mermaid

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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 (star, children), 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:pg16:5:45
# text = It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	irritating	irritate	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
8	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	mermaid	mermaid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **irritate** | past · progressive | star |  |  |  |  | to children | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP-PRO-ARB»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **not** **see** | past · perfect | children | a mermaid |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer mermaid=Stimulus |

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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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