Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VI. Pig and Pepper, sentence 41

“Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, “why your cat grins like that?”

Who acts: you, Alice, cat · What happens: tell, say, not be, be, speak, grin · To what, where: Alice, good manners · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VI. Pig and Pepper. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Alice, cat), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	“	"	PUNCT	_	5 tell	punct
2	Please	please	INTJ	_	5 tell	discourse
3	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 tell	aux
4	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	5 tell	nsubj
5	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 said	ccomp
6	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	5 tell	iobj
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 tell	punct
8	”	"	PUNCT	_	5 tell	punct
9	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	Alice	Alice	PROPN	Number=Sing	9 said	nsubj
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 timidly	punct
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	13 little	det
13	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 timidly	obl:unmarked
14	timidly	timidly	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 Alice	acl:relcl
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 sure	punct
16	for	for	SCONJ	_	21 sure	mark
17	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 sure	nsubj
18	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 sure	cop
19	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	21 sure	advmod
20	quite	quite	ADV	_	21 sure	advmod
21	sure	sure	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 said	parataxis
22	whether	whether	SCONJ	_	26 manners	mark
23	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	26 manners	nsubj
24	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	26 manners	cop
25	good	good	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 manners	amod
26	manners	manners	NOUN	Number=Ptan	21 sure	ccomp
27	for	for	SCONJ	_	30 speak	mark
28	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	30 speak	nsubj
29	to	to	PART	_	30 speak	mark
30	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 sure	xcomp
31	first	first	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	30 speak	advmod
32	,	,	PUNCT	_	37 grins	punct
33	“	"	PUNCT	_	37 grins	punct
34	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	37 grins	advmod
35	your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	36 cat	nmod:poss
36	cat	cat	NOUN	Number=Sing	37 grins	nsubj
37	grins	grin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	30 speak	advcl
38	like	like	ADP	_	39 that	case
39	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	37 grins	obl
40	?	?	PUNCT	_	21 sure	punct
41	”	"	PUNCT	_	9 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert in a quote	would	you		Alice		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient
2	say speech: assert	past	Alice				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	not is	past	Alice			sure property	tree rules
4	is a	past	cat	good manners			tree rules
5	speak speech: other	to-infinitive	Alice			first property	vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	grin in a quote	present	your cat			like that	vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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.

Text: «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Project Gutenberg book 11 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/7/41/