---
title: ‘I bought this mule on which I am riding.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I bought this mule on which I am riding.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 1, sentence 37

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‘I bought this mule on which I am riding.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** buy, ride · **To what, where:** mule

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, 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 (I), 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:pg7277:26:37
# text = ‘I bought this mule on which I am riding.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	bought	buy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	mule	mule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	obl	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	riding	ride	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **buy** | past | I | this mule |  |  |  |  | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mule=Theme |
| 2 | **ride** | present · progressive | I |  |  |  |  | on this mule | 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 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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