---
title: At this the Chief began to laugh. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: At this the Chief began to laugh. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, 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/pg2892/49/27/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 27

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At this the Chief began to laugh.

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**What happens:** begin, laugh · **To what, where:** Chief

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg2892:49:27
# text = At this the Chief began to laugh.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	Chief	Chief	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
5	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	laugh	laugh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past |  |  |  | the Chief |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **laugh** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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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