---
title: The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brow… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brown finger at Tom. " Who acts: horrid thing. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 4, sentence 1

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The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brown finger at Tom. "

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**Who acts:** horrid thing · **What happens:** break, screech, point · **To what, where:** screeching laugh, brown finger, Tom

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horrid thing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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 {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg14241:18:1
# text = The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brown finger at Tom. "
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	horrid	horrid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	broke	break	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	into	into	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	screeching	screech	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	amod	_	_
8	laugh	laugh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	pointed	point	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	finger	finger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	at	at	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	Tom	Tom	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **break** | past | the horrid thing |  |  |  |  | into a screeching laugh *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Patient into laugh=Result |
| 2 | **screech** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **point** | past | the horrid thing *not said here* | thing's brown finger |  | Tom |  |  | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent finger=Patient |

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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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**Text:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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