---
title: They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed; and it w… — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed; and it was all mother Wendy’s fault! Who acts: boys, bed. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON, sentence 253

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They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed; and it was all mother Wendy’s fault!

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**Who acts:** boys, bed · **What happens:** chuckle, be · **To what, where:** fault

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys, bed), 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:pg16:1314`): 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:pg16:9:253
# text = They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed; and it was all mother Wendy’s fault!
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	chuckled	chuckle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	boylike	boylike	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	advcl	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
10	late	late	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	advcl	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
13	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	21	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
17	all	all	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
18	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	Wendy	Wendy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	21	nmod:poss	_	_
20	’s	's	PART	POS	_	19	case	_	_
21	fault	fault	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **chuckle** | past | boys *= boy* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | would | boys *= boy* |  |  |  |  | for bed; late *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | past | bed | mother Wendy's fault |  |  |  | all *property* | 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:** 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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