---
title: It sounded as if a troop of horses were ploughing their way over a m… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It sounded as if a troop of horses were ploughing their way over a moor. Who acts: It, troop. 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 70

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It sounded as if a troop of horses were ploughing their way over a moor.

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**Who acts:** It, troop · **What happens:** sound, plough · **To what, where:** way, moor

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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 (It, troop), 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:pg641:9:70
# text = It sounded as if a troop of horses were ploughing their way over a moor.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sounded	sound	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
4	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	troop	troop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	ploughing	plough	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	over	over	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	moor	moor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sound** | past | It |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **plough** | past · progressive | a troop of horses | horses's way |  | a moor |  |  | vn wipe\_instr-10.4.2 «NP V NP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent way=Initial\_Location |

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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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