---
title: And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one. — The Book of Dragons · tree and pragmatics
description: And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one. Who acts: laugh, dragon. A sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg23661/4/35/)

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# The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 4, sentence 35

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And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one.

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**Who acts:** laugh, dragon · **What happens:** not be, laugh · **To what, where:** merry one

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This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, 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 (laugh, dragon), 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:pg23661:4:35
# text = And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	's	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	laugh	laugh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | the dragon's laugh | a merry one |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **laugh** |  | the dragon |  |  |  |  |  | nom laugh «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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:** «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Project Gutenberg book 23661 (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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