---
title: “I think I must have ridden friskier horses before now.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I think I must have ridden friskier horses before now.” Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master-maid, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Master-maid, part 1, sentence 53

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“I think I must have ridden friskier horses before now.”

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** think, ride · **To what, where:** friskier horses · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master-maid, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg503:17:53
# text = “I think I must have ridden friskier horses before now.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux	_	_
7	ridden	ride	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	ccomp	_	_
8	friskier	frisky	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	9	amod	_	_
9	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
10	before	before	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **ride** *in a quote* | must · perfect | I | friskier horses |  |  |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent horse=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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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