---
title: ‘But something that we can laugh at,’ said the sultan. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But something that we can laugh at,’ said the sultan. Who acts: we, something. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, 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/pg5615/4/107/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 107

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‘But something that we can laugh at,’ said the sultan.

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**Who acts:** we, something · **What happens:** laugh, say · **To what, where:** sultan · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, 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 (we, something), 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:pg5615:4:107
# text = ‘But something that we can laugh at,’ said the sultan.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	11	nsubj	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	obj	_	_
5	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	laugh	laugh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sultan	sultan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | can | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | something | the sultan |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent sultan=Topic |

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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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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