---
title: The sheriff stopped his horses, and asked what they were doing. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The sheriff stopped his horses, and asked what they were doing. Who acts: sheriff, horses. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Other Wise Men of Gotham., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/15/31/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [Other Wise Men of Gotham.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/15/) / 31

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Other Wise Men of Gotham., sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The sheriff stopped his horses, and asked what they were doing.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sheriff, horses · **What happens:** stop, ask, do · **To what, where:** horses · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Other Wise Men of Gotham.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sheriff, horses), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:15:31
# text = The sheriff stopped his horses, and asked what they were doing.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sheriff	sheriff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stop** | past | the sheriff | sheriff's horses |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Subeventuality horse=Eventuality |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the sheriff *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **do** | past · progressive | horses *= horse* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/15/30/)
- next →: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/15/32/)
- ↑ back to [Other Wise Men of Gotham.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/15/)