Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground, sentence 109

The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

Who acts: you, King · What happens: have, behead, not talk, argue · To what, where: head, argument, nonsense

This is a sentence of «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» by Lewis Carroll, Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, King), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 King	det
2	King	King	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 argument	nmod:poss
3	’s	's	PART	_	2 King	case
4	argument	argument	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 beheaded	nsubj:outer
5	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 beheaded	aux:pass
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 beheaded	punct
7	that	that	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	8 anything	det
8	anything	anything	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	15 beheaded	nsubj:pass
9	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	10 had	nsubj
10	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 anything	acl:relcl
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	12 head	det
12	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 had	obj
13	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 beheaded	aux
14	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	15 beheaded	aux:pass
15	beheaded	behead	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 talk	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	23 talk	cc
18	that	that	SCONJ	_	23 talk	mark
19	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	23 talk	nsubj
20	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	23 talk	aux
21	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	23 talk	advmod
22	to	to	PART	_	23 talk	mark
23	talk	talk	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 beheaded	conj
24	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 talk	obj
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	15 beheaded	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	have	past		a head	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Patient
2	behead	could · past · passive		the King's argument	vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
3	not talk	past	you	nonsense	vn compel-59.1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent nonsense=Patient
4	argue		the King		nom argument «communication transitive»: poss=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/pg11/9/109/