---
title: As the night wore on the stable boys found it rather cold work to si… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: As the night wore on the stable boys found it rather cold work to sit still on horseback. Who acts: stable boys. 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 177

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As the night wore on the stable boys found it rather cold work to sit still on horseback.

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**Who acts:** stable boys · **What happens:** wear, find, sit · **To what, where:** notice, horseback

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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), 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:pg540:9:177
# text = As the night wore on the stable boys found it rather cold work to sit still on horseback.
1	As	as	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
4	wore	wear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	on	on	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	stable	stable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	sit	sit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	_
16	still	still	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
17	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	horseback	horseback	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wear** | past |  |  |  |  | night |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **find** | past | the stable boys | notice |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent it=Theme work=Attribute |
| 3 | **sit** | to-infinitive | the stable boys *not said here* |  |  | horseback | still |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on horseback=Location |

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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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