---
title: The man laughed at his wife’s words, and thought it was a good joke. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The man laughed at his wife’s words, and thought it was a good joke. Who acts: man, birth, wife. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son(25), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son(25), sentence 17

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The man laughed at his wife’s words, and thought it was a good joke.

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**Who acts:** man, birth, wife · **What happens:** laugh, think, be, word · **To what, where:** words, good joke · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son(25). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, birth, wife), 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:pg640:36:17
# text = The man laughed at his wife’s words, and thought it was a good joke.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’s	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | past | the man |  |  | spark's wife's words |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | the man *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | birth | a good joke |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **word** |  | spark's wife |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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