---
title: ‘I see a swarm of brown horses racing madly after us,’ he answered. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I see a swarm of brown horses racing madly after us,’ he answered. Who acts: I, brown horses, man. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I see a swarm of brown horses racing madly after us,’ he answered.

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**Who acts:** I, brown horses, man · **What happens:** see, race, answer · **To what, where:** swarm · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, brown horses, man), 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:pg3454:9:32
# text = ‘I see a swarm of brown horses racing madly after us,’ he answered.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	see	see	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	ccomp	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	swarm	swarm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nmod	_	_
9	racing	race	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	madly	madly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	after	after	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
15	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | present | I | a swarm of brown horses |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer swarm=Stimulus |
| 2 | **race** | gerund | brown horses *not said here* |  |  |  | after us | madly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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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**Text:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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