---
title: Nervous laughter at serious times is common; it is the body letting… — Grief: anger, guilt and laughing at the wrong mo… · tree and pragmatics
description: Nervous laughter at serious times is common; it is the body letting off tension, not a sign of not caring. Who acts: Nervous laughter, laughter, body, sign. A sentence of the lesson «Grief: anger, guilt and laughing at the wrong moment» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its
---

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# Grief: anger, guilt and laughing at the wrong moment, sentence 13

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Nervous laughter at serious times is common; it is the body letting off tension, not a sign of not caring.

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**Who acts:** Nervous laughter, laughter, body, sign · **What happens:** be, let off, not care · **To what, where:** body, tension

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Grief: anger, guilt and laughing at the wrong moment» of the religion ethics 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 (Nervous laughter, laughter, body, sign), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:067-grief-anger-guilt-and-laughing-at-the-wrong-moment.lesson:13
# text = Nervous laughter at serious times is common; it is the body letting off tension, not a sign of not caring.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 067-grief-anger-guilt-and-laughing-at-the-wrong-moment.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): R2-punct-next ×1
1	Nervous	nervous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	laughter	laughter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	serious	serious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	Agree=R2-punct-next|Haiku=7:punct
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	_
13	letting	let	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	acl	_	_
14	off	off	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	tension	tension	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
20	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
21	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
22	caring	care	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	19	acl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | Nervous laughter at serious times |  |  |  |  | common *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | present | laughter | the body and a sign |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **let off** | gerund | the body and a sign *not said here* | tension |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tension=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **care** | gerund | a sign *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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:religion-ethics:067-grief-anger-guilt-and-laughing-at-the-wrong-moment.lesson:13`.

**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): R2-punct-next ×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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