---
title: But the peacocks only flew away, laughing at her. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the peacocks only flew away, laughing at her. Who acts: peacocks. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Princess Rosette, sentence 164

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But the peacocks only flew away, laughing at her.

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**Who acts:** peacocks · **What happens:** fly away, laugh

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (peacocks), 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:pg540:11:164
# text = But the peacocks only flew away, laughing at her.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	peacocks	peacock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	away	away	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	laughing	laugh	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	advcl	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly away** | past | the peacocks |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **laugh** | gerund | the peacocks *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at sight | 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:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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