---
title: As they drew near the three sisters, and marked their beauty, they c… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: As they drew near the three sisters, and marked their beauty, they checked their horses and rode slowly by. Who acts: sisters. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 10

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As they drew near the three sisters, and marked their beauty, they checked their horses and rode slowly by.

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**Who acts:** sisters · **What happens:** draw, mark, check, ride · **To what, where:** beauty, horses

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sisters), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg641:2955`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg641:35:10
# text = As they drew near the three sisters, and marked their beauty, they checked their horses and rode slowly by.
1	As	as	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	drew	draw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
4	near	near	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	nummod	_	_
7	sisters	sister	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	marked	mark	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	beauty	beauty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	checked	check	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
16	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	rode	ride	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	conj	_	_
20	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
21	by	by	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **draw** | past | sisters *= sister* |  |  |  |  | near the three sisters | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **mark** | past | sisters *= sister* *not said here* | sisters's beauty |  |  |  |  | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent beauty=Destination |
| 3 | **check** | past | sisters *= sister* | sisters's horses |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent horse=Theme |
| 4 | **ride** | past | sisters *= sister* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | slowly *property* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP.agent V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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