---
title: It was the little cow-boy driving his herd back to the byre. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was the little cow-boy driving his herd back to the byre. Who acts: voice, little cow boy. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 18

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It was the little cow-boy driving his herd back to the byre.

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**Who acts:** voice, little cow boy · **What happens:** be, drive back · **To what, where:** little cow boy, herd, byre

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (voice, little cow boy), 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:pg540:2:18
# text = It was the little cow-boy driving his herd back to the byre.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
5	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	driving	drive	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	acl	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	herd	herd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	back	back	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	byre	byre	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | voice | the little cow boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **drive back** | gerund | the little cow boy *not said here* | boy's herd |  | the byre |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent herd=Theme to byre=Trajectory |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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