---
title: "Sent to the knacker's yard" (old-fashioned UK) means an old horse w… — Soft words for hard things: animals and pets and… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Sent to the knacker's yard" (old-fashioned UK) means an old horse was sent to be slaughtered. Who acts: old horse. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: animals and pets and money and poverty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

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# Soft words for hard things: animals and pets and money and poverty, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Sent to the knacker's yard" (old-fashioned UK) means an old horse was sent to be slaughtered.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** old horse · **What happens:** send, mean, slaughter · **To what, where:** old horse · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: animals and pets and money and poverty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old horse), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:018-pets-and-money.lesson:17
# text = "Sent to the knacker's yard" (old-fashioned UK) means an old horse was sent to be slaughtered.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 018-pets-and-money.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Sent	send	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	nsubj	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	knacker	knacker	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	yard	yard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct
9	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	13	punct	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	_
12	fashioned	fashioned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	UK	UK	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	parataxis	_	_
14	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	13	punct	_	_
15	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
16	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj:pass	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux:pass	_	_
20	sent	send	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	ccomp	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	23	mark	_	_
22	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	23	aux:pass	_	_
23	slaughtered	slaughter	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	20	xcomp	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **send** *in a quote* | participle |  |  |  |  |  | to the knacker's yard | tree rules |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **send** | past · passive |  | a old horse |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **slaughter** | to-infinitive · passive | a old horse *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP» |

<!-- .note -->
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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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:018-pets-and-money.lesson:17`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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