---
title: A joke is only a joke if everyone, including the target, can laugh. — Jokes and teasing: when is it still funny? · tree and pragmatics
description: A joke is only a joke if everyone, including the target, can laugh. Who acts: joke, everyone. A sentence of the lesson «Jokes and teasing: when is it still funny?» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/203-jokes-and-teasing/10/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Jokes and teasing: when is it still fu…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/203-jokes-and-teasing/) / 10

# Jokes and teasing: when is it still funny?, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A joke is only a joke if everyone, including the target, can laugh.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** joke, everyone · **What happens:** be, laugh · **To what, where:** joke

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Jokes and teasing: when is it still funny?» of the everyday 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 (joke, everyone), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:203-jokes-and-teasing.lesson:10
# text = A joke is only a joke if everyone, including the target, can laugh.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 203-jokes-and-teasing.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
8	everyone	everyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	15	nsubj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=12:punct
10	including	include	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	target	target	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	laugh	laugh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a joke | a joke |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **laugh** *a condition, not said to happen* | can | everyone |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/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:everyday:203-jokes-and-teasing.lesson:10`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×1. **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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Jokes and teasing: when is it still fu…, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/203-jokes-and-teasing/9/)
- next →: [Jokes and teasing: when is it still fu…, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/203-jokes-and-teasing/11/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/203-jokes-and-teasing/)