---
title: Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. Who acts: Nobody, women. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg128/1/11/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 1, sentence 11

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Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first.

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**Who acts:** Nobody, women · **What happens:** know, be, tell · **To what, where:** women · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, 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 (Nobody, women), 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:pg128:1:11
# text = Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first.
1	Nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
2	knows	know	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present | Nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **does** | present | women *= woman* |  |  |  |  | old *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | women *= woman* |  |  | first *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient |

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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 Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 128 (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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