---
title: The mare pulled it a little forward, and then a little back, and the… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The mare pulled it a little forward, and then a little back, and then it stopped quite short. Who acts: mare, spot. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/209/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Master Thief](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/) / 209

# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 209

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The mare pulled it a little forward, and then a little back, and then it stopped quite short.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** mare, spot · **What happens:** pull, stop · **To what, where:** spot

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (mare, spot), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:9:209
# text = The mare pulled it a little forward, and then a little back, and then it stopped quite short.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	mare	mare	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	obl	_	_
7	forward	forward	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	13	advmod	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	18	advmod	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
19	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pull** | past | the mare | spot |  |  |  | a little *obl*; a little back *obl* | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **stop** | past | spot |  |  |  | then | short *property* | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 208](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/208/)
- next →: [sentence 210](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/210/)
- ↑ back to [The Master Thief](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/)