---
title: The prisoner shall be told to steal this horse and bring it to me.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The prisoner shall be told to steal this horse and bring it to me.’ Who acts: prisoner. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Mermaid, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/52/36/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Golden Mermaid](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/52/) / 36

# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Mermaid, sentence 36

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The prisoner shall be told to steal this horse and bring it to me.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** prisoner · **What happens:** tell, steal, bring · **To what, where:** prisoner, horse, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Mermaid. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prisoner), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:52:36
# text = The prisoner shall be told to steal this horse and bring it to me.’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	prisoner	prisoner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	steal	steal	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	bring	bring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | shall · passive |  | the prisoner |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: subject=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **steal** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the prisoner *not said here* | this horse |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location horse=Theme |
| 3 | **bring** | infinitive | the prisoner *not said here* | prisoner | me |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme to i=Destination |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 35](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/52/35/)
- next →: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/52/37/)
- ↑ back to [The Golden Mermaid](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/52/)