---
title: The horses advanced slowly and mournfully, with their heads bent on… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The horses advanced slowly and mournfully, with their heads bent on the ground. Who acts: horses. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dogs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Dogs, sentence 18

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The horses advanced slowly and mournfully, with their heads bent on the ground.

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**Who acts:** horses · **What happens:** advance, bend · **To what, where:** heads, ground

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dogs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horses), 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:pg7277:56:18
# text = The horses advanced slowly and mournfully, with their heads bent on the ground.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	horses	horse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	advanced	advance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	mournfully	mournfully	ADV	RB	_	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
11	bent	bend	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	acl	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **advance** | past | the horses |  |  |  |  | with horses's heads; slowly *property* | vn caused\_calibratable\_cos-45.6.2-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **bend** | participle |  | horses's heads *not said here* |  | the ground |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on ground=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 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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