---
title: “Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily. Who acts: speak. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, 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/tales/pg1597/9/25/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Andersen's Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/) / [The Shoes of Fortune, part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/) / 25

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, sentence 25

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** speak · **What happens:** laugh

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (speak), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg1597:9:25
# text = “Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Rather	rather	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	speak	speak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	nmod	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	which	which	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	8	det	_	_
8	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	laugh	laugh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	heartily	heartily	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** *in a quote* | may | rather speak of something |  |  |  |  | heartily *property* | 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 -->

**Text:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/24/)
- next →: [sentence 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/26/)
- ↑ back to [The Shoes of Fortune, part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/)