---
title: So the mother wiped the axe and laughed. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So the mother wiped the axe and laughed. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Rose-tree, sentence 25

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So the mother wiped the axe and laughed.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** wipe, laugh · **To what, where:** axe

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree. 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:pg7439:8:25
# text = So the mother wiped the axe and laughed.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	wiped	wipe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	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 | **wipe** | past | the mother | the axe |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent axe=Theme |
| 2 | **laugh** | past | the mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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