---
title: But his father and his mother laughed heartily, and thought his word… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But his father and his mother laughed heartily, and thought his words idle talk. Who acts: father. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 81

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But his father and his mother laughed heartily, and thought his words idle talk.

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**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** laugh, think, word · **To what, where:** words

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father), 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:pg641:29:81
# text = But his father and his mother laughed heartily, and thought his words idle talk.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
7	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	heartily	heartily	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	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	7	conj	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
14	idle	idle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	talk	talk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | past | father's father and father's mother |  |  |  |  | heartily *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | father's father and father's mother *not said here* | father's words |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent word=Theme talk=Attribute |
| 3 | **word** |  | father |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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