Alice in Wonderland, chapter III, part 1: The driest thing and the Caucus-race, sentence 17
Alice asks "What is a Caucus-race?", "not that she wanted much to know", but because the Dodo paused as if somebody ought to speak; the Dodo answers "the best way to explain it is to do it".
Who acts: Alice, Eaglet, Dodo, best way · What happens: ask, be, not want, know, pause, speak · To what, where: Caucus race, much, way · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Alice in Wonderland, chapter III, part 1: The driest thing and the Caucus-race» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Alice, Eaglet, Dodo, best way), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice | Alice | PROPN | Number=Sing | 2 asks | nsubj |
| 2 | asks | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 race | punct |
| 4 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 9 race | nsubj |
| 5 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 race | cop |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 race | det |
| 7 | Caucus | caucus | PROPN | Number=Sing | 9 race | compound |
| 8 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 7 Caucus | punct |
| 9 | race | race | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 asks | ccomp |
| 10 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 9 race | punct |
| 11 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 race | punct |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 race | punct |
| 13 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 wanted | punct |
| 14 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 17 wanted | advmod |
| 15 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 17 wanted | mark |
| 16 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 wanted | nsubj |
| 17 | wanted | want | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 asks | ccomp |
| 18 | much | much | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 wanted | obj |
| 19 | to | to | PART | _ | 20 know | mark |
| 20 | know | know | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 18 much | acl |
| 21 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 wanted | punct |
| 22 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 47 do | punct |
| 23 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 2 asks | cc |
| 24 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 27 paused | mark |
| 25 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 26 Dodo | det |
| 26 | Dodo | Dodo | PROPN | Number=Sing | 27 paused | nsubj |
| 27 | paused | pause | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 37 answers | advcl |
| 28 | as | as | ADP | _ | 29 if | fixed |
| 29 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 31 ought | mark |
| 30 | somebody | somebody | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 31 ought | nsubj |
| 31 | ought | ought | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 27 paused | advcl |
| 32 | to | to | PART | _ | 33 speak | mark |
| 33 | speak | speak | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 31 ought | xcomp |
| 34 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 37 answers | punct |
| 35 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 36 Dodo | det |
| 36 | Dodo | Dodo | PROPN | Number=Sing | 37 answers | nsubj |
| 37 | answers | answer | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 asks | conj |
| 38 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 41 way | punct |
| 39 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 41 way | det |
| 40 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 41 way | amod |
| 41 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 47 do | nsubj |
| 42 | to | to | PART | _ | 43 explain | mark |
| 43 | explain | explain | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 41 way | acl |
| 44 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 43 explain | obj |
| 45 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 47 do | cop |
| 46 | to | to | PART | _ | 47 do | mark |
| 47 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 37 answers | ccomp |
| 48 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 47 do | obj |
| 49 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 47 do | punct |
| 50 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 asks | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask | present | Alice | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | is a in a quote | present | a Caucus race | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | not want in a quote | past | Eaglet | much | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot much=Theme | ||||
| 4 | know in a quote | to-infinitive | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer | ||||||
| 5 | pause | participle | the Dodo | vn linger-53.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 6 | speak speech: other | to-infinitive | the Dodo not said here | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 7 | answer speech: assert | present | the Dodo | tree rules | |||||
| 8 | explain speech: assert in a quote | to-infinitive | the best way not said here | way | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic | ||||
| 9 | is in a quote | present | the best way | do property | tree rules |
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.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, mova-school-agreed-en.conllu) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence school:books:005-alice-ch3-part1-a-caucus-race.lesson:17.
The tree: Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×4, R6-punct-agree ×3, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×2. The frames are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (prag) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.
See the release 0.4.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/5-alice-ch3-part1-a-caucus-race/17/