---
title: ‘We are swifter than those,’ said the horse, and flew on again. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘We are swifter than those,’ said the horse, and flew on again. Who acts: We, swifter. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/9/33/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 33

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‘We are swifter than those,’ said the horse, and flew on again.

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**Who acts:** We, swifter · **What happens:** be, say, fly on · **To what, where:** horse · **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 (We, swifter), 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:pg3454:9:33
# text = ‘We are swifter than those,’ said the horse, and flew on again.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	swifter	swift	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	9	nsubj	_	_
5	than	than	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	those	that	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	again	again	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | We |  |  |  |  | than those; swift *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | swifter | the horse |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent horse=Topic |
| 3 | **fly on** | past | swifter *not said here* |  |  |  | again |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «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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