---
title: The stable boys were just watering the horses for the night, and it… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The stable boys were just watering the horses for the night, and it was quite as much as they could do to attend to that. Who acts: stable boys, staff, horses. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 165

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The stable boys were just watering the horses for the night, and it was quite as much as they could do to attend to that.

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**Who acts:** stable boys, staff, horses · **What happens:** water, be, do, attend · **To what, where:** horses

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stable boys, staff, horses), 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:pg540:9:165
# text = The stable boys were just watering the horses for the night, and it was quite as much as they could do to attend to that.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	stable	stable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	just	just	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	watering	water	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
16	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
17	as	as	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obj	_	_
19	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
20	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
21	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
22	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	acl	_	_
23	to	to	PART	TO	_	24	mark	_	_
24	attend	attend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	xcomp	_	_
25	to	to	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	24	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **water** | past · progressive | the stable boys |  | the horses |  | night |  | vn butter-9.9 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent horse=Destination |
| 2 | **is** | past | staff |  |  |  |  | much *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **do** | could | horses *= horse* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **attend** | to-infinitive | horses *= horse* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to that | vn caring-75.2-1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent to that=Theme |

<!-- .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 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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