---
title: At once like an eel she slid between Starkey’s legs into the water. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: At once like an eel she slid between Starkey’s legs into the water. Who acts: Starkey. 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 82

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At once like an eel she slid between Starkey’s legs into the water.

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**Who acts:** Starkey · **What happens:** slide · **To what, where:** water

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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 (Starkey), 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:pg16:9:82
# text = At once like an eel she slid between Starkey’s legs into the water.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	7	advmod	_	_
3	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	eel	eel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	slid	slide	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	between	between	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	Starkey	Starkey	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
12	into	into	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **slide** | past | Starkey |  |  | the water |  | between Starkey's legs; once *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V PP.source PP.trajectory PP.destination»: agent=Theme between leg=Source into water=Trajectory |

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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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