---
title: On hearing this the Boy laughed, and replied: — Folk tales from Tibet · tree and pragmatics
description: On hearing this the Boy laughed, and replied: Who acts: Boy. A sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Folk tales from Tibet, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head., sentence 23

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On hearing this the Boy laughed, and replied:

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**Who acts:** Boy · **What happens:** hear, laugh, reply · **To what, where:** this

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This is a sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Boy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75000:16:23
# text = On hearing this the Boy laughed, and replied:
1	On	on	SCONJ	IN	_	2	mark	_	_
2	hearing	hear	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
3	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	obj	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Boy	Boy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | gerund | the Boy *not said here* | this |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer this=Stimulus |
| 2 | **laugh** | past | the Boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «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:** «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, Project Gutenberg book 75000 (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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