---
title: On a pile of cushions, covered with tapestry, sat the boy. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: On a pile of cushions, covered with tapestry, sat the boy. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 11, 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/pg128/11/58/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 11, sentence 58

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On a pile of cushions, covered with tapestry, sat the boy.

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**What happens:** cover, sit · **To what, where:** cushions, boy, pile

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg128:11:58
# text = On a pile of cushions, covered with tapestry, sat the boy.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	pile	pile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	cushions	cushion	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	covered	cover	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	tapestry	tapestry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
11	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cover** | participle |  | cushions *not said here* |  |  |  | with tapestry | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent with tapestry=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | past |  | the boy |  | a pile of cushions |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent boy=Theme on pile=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 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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