---
title: They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees. Who acts: men. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 6

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They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** unbridl, tie · **To what, where:** horses, men

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men), 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:pg503:34:6
# text = They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	unbridled	unbridl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	tied	tie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **unbridl** | past | men *= man* | men's horses |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tie** | past | men *= man* *not said here* | men *= man* |  |  |  | to trees | vn mix-22.1-2 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent they=Patient to tree=Co-Patient |

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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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