---
title: The little horse allowed itself to be rubbed down without a toss of… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The little horse allowed itself to be rubbed down without a toss of its head and without a kick. Who acts: little horse, horse. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Blackbird, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Blackbird, sentence 82

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The little horse allowed itself to be rubbed down without a toss of its head and without a kick.

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**Who acts:** little horse, horse · **What happens:** allow, rub down, toss · **To what, where:** horse, head

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Blackbird. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little horse, 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:pg7277:21:82
# text = The little horse allowed itself to be rubbed down without a toss of its head and without a kick.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	allowed	allow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	itself	itself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	4	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	aux:pass	_	_
8	rubbed	rub	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	xcomp	_	_
9	down	down	ADP	RP	_	8	compound:prt	_	_
10	without	without	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	toss	toss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	without	without	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	kick	kick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **allow** | past | the little horse | horse |  |  |  |  | vn allow-64.1-1 «NP V NP S»: agent=Causer itself=Beneficiary clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **rub down** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive · passive | horse *not said here* |  |  |  |  | without a toss of horse's head and a kick | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination» |
| 3 | **toss** |  |  | horse's head and a kick |  |  |  |  | nom toss «act transitive»: of=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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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