---
title: Then his mother burst out laughing and said, ‘What an idea! — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then his mother burst out laughing and said, ‘What an idea! Who acts: mother. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Hazel-nut Child (29), sentence 10

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Then his mother burst out laughing and said, ‘What an idea!

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** burst out, laugh, say, idea · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg640:40:10
# text = Then his mother burst out laughing and said, ‘What an idea!
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	burst	burst	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	out	out	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	laughing	laugh	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	nsubj	_	_
12	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **burst out** | past | messenger's mother |  |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **laugh** | gerund | messenger's mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | messenger's mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **idea** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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 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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