---
title: “It can’t lift two; Michael and Curly tried.” — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: “It can’t lift two; Michael and Curly tried.” Who acts: kite, Michael. 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 287

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“It can’t lift two; Michael and Curly tried.”

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**Who acts:** kite, Michael · **What happens:** not lift, try · **To what, where:** two

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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 (kite, Michael), 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:pg16:9:287
# text = “It can’t lift two; Michael and Curly tried.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	lift	lift	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
8	Michael	Michael	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	Curly	Curly	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **lift** *in a quote* | can | kite | two |  |  |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent two=Theme |
| 2 | **try** *in a quote* | past | Michael and Curly |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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