---
title: ‘Take this scythe and cut as much grass as the white horse will want… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Take this scythe and cut as much grass as the white horse will want for its day’s feed, and clean out its stall. Who acts: you, white horse. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 1, sentence 114

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‘Take this scythe and cut as much grass as the white horse will want for its day’s feed, and clean out its stall.

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**Who acts:** you, white horse · **What happens:** take, cut, want, clean out · **To what, where:** scythe, much grass, stall

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, white horse), 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:pg641:772`): 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:pg641:9:114
# text = ‘Take this scythe and cut as much grass as the white horse will want for its day’s feed, and clean out its stall.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Take	take	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
4	scythe	scythe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	cut	cut	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	as	as	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	want	want	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	advcl	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod:poss	_	_
19	’s	's	PART	POS	_	18	case	_	_
20	feed	feed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	clean	clean	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
24	out	out	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	_
25	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	stall	stall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obj	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | imperative | you *not said here* | this scythe |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent scythe=Theme |
| 2 | **cut** | infinitive | you *not said here* | much grass |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset grass=Product |
| 3 | **want** | future | the white horse |  |  |  |  | for grass's day's feed | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 4 | **clean out** | infinitive | you *not said here* | grass's stall |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent stall=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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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