---
title: "Truly a matter for laughing and weeping. — Indian Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Truly a matter for laughing and weeping. Who acts: matter. A sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 12, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Indian Fairy Tales, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 12, sentence 40

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"Truly a matter for laughing and weeping.

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**Who acts:** matter · **What happens:** laugh, weep

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This is a sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (matter), 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:pg7128:18:40
# text = "Truly a matter for laughing and weeping.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Truly	truly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	laughing	laugh	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	acl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	weeping	weep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** *in a quote* | gerund | a matter *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **weep** *in a quote* | gerund | a matter *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2 «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:** «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7128 (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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