---
title: But they only laughed at her, crying: — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But they only laughed at her, crying: Who acts: doves. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Blue Bird, part 3, sentence 90

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But they only laughed at her, crying:

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**Who acts:** doves · **What happens:** laugh, cry

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (doves), 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:pg7277:4:90
# text = But they only laughed at her, crying:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	crying	cry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	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** | past | doves *= dove* |  |  |  |  | at Queen | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | gerund | doves *= dove* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «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:** «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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