---
title: If the lady and her visitors can laugh at this, surely you can. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: If the lady and her visitors can laugh at this, surely you can. Who acts: lady. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, sentence 116

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If the lady and her visitors can laugh at this, surely you can.

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**Who acts:** lady · **What happens:** laugh · **To what, where:** this

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lady), 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:pg27200:44:116
# text = If the lady and her visitors can laugh at this, surely you can.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
5	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	visitors	visitor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	laugh	laugh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | can | the lady and lady's visitors |  |  | this |  | surely *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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