---
title: They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mou… — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth. 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 54

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They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth.

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**What happens:** catch, board · **To what, where:** hands, pirate ship

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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: 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:pg16:9:54
# text = They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	caught	catch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	boarding	board	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	pirate	pirate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | past · perfect · passive |  | hands *= hand* |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP.beneficiary NP»: subject=Beneficiary she=Theme |
| 2 | **board** | gerund |  | the pirate ship |  |  |  | with a knife in Tiger's mouth | vn odge-46-1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent ship=Theme with knife=Location |

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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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