---
title: At the school disco a group laughs at Sam's dancing — which, to be f… — Standing by a friend · tree and pragmatics
description: At the school disco a group laughs at Sam's dancing — which, to be fair, looks like a startled octopus. Who acts: group, dancing, Sam. A sentence of the lesson «Standing by a friend» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Standing by a friend, sentence 18

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At the school disco a group laughs at Sam's dancing — which, to be fair, looks like a startled octopus.

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**Who acts:** group, dancing, Sam · **What happens:** laugh, be, look, dance · **To what, where:** school disco

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Standing by a friend» 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 (group, dancing, Sam), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:370-standing-by-a-friend.lesson:18
# text = At the school disco a group laughs at Sam's dancing — which, to be fair, looks like a startled octopus.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 370-standing-by-a-friend.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): R5-strong ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	school	school	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	disco	disco	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	group	group	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	laughs	laugh	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=19:parataxis
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	Sam	Sam	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	's	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:nmod
12	—	-	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
13	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
16	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	cop	_	_
17	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	advcl	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
19	looks	look	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=0:root
20	like	like	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
22	startled	startle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	amod	_	_
23	octopus	octopus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=19:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | present | a group |  |  | the school disco |  | at Sam's dancing | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive | Sam's dancing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | fair *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **look** | present | Sam's dancing |  |  |  |  | like a startled octopus | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 4 | **dance** |  | Sam |  |  |  |  |  | nom dancing «act transitive»: poss=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.

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**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:370-standing-by-a-friend.lesson:18`.

**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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-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/).

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