---
title: But his brown horse stood sadly hanging his head. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But his brown horse stood sadly hanging his head. Who acts: brown horse. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 4, sentence 43

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But his brown horse stood sadly hanging his head.

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**Who acts:** brown horse · **What happens:** stand, hang · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brown horse), 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:pg641:22:43
# text = But his brown horse stood sadly hanging his head.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	sadly	sadly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	hanging	hang	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	xcomp	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | Petru's brown horse |  |  |  |  | sadly *property* | vn admire-31.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **hang** | gerund | Petru's brown horse *not said here* | Petru's head |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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