---
title: “What we need is just a nice motherly person.” — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “What we need is just a nice motherly person.” Who acts: we. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE, sentence 208

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“What we need is just a nice motherly person.”

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** need, be · **To what, where:** nice motherly person

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg16:7:208
# text = “What we need is just a nice motherly person.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	need	need	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
6	just	just	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
8	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	motherly	motherly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **need** *in a quote* | present | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | a nice motherly person |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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