---
title: These he secured by a silken rope to his own horse, and then looked… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: These he secured by a silken rope to his own horse, and then looked about for the cypress tree. Who acts: silken rope. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Knife, 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/pg641/23/28/)

<!-- 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 Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Enchanted Knife](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/23/) / 28

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Enchanted Knife, sentence 28

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
These he secured by a silken rope to his own horse, and then looked about for the cypress tree.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** silken rope · **What happens:** secure, look · **To what, where:** These

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Knife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (silken rope), 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:pg641:23:28
# text = These he secured by a silken rope to his own horse, and then looked about for the cypress tree.
1	These	this	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	3	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	secured	secure	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	silken	silken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	rope	rope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	15	advmod	_	_
15	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
16	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
17	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	cypress	cypress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	_
20	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **secure** | participle · passive | a silken rope to man's own horse | These |  |  |  |  | vn ensure-99 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition subject=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | past |  |  |  |  | then | for the cypress tree; about *property* | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for tree=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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/23/27/)
- next →: [sentence 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/23/29/)
- ↑ back to [The Enchanted Knife](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/23/)