---
title: Behind his chair stood a crowd of attendants eager to minister to hi… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Behind his chair stood a crowd of attendants eager to minister to his wants. Who acts: beard. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 13, 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/pg128/13/22/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 13, sentence 22

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Behind his chair stood a crowd of attendants eager to minister to his wants.

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**Who acts:** beard · **What happens:** stand, want · **To what, where:** crowd, chair

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (beard), 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:pg128:13:22
# text = Behind his chair stood a crowd of attendants eager to minister to his wants.
1	Behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	chair	chair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
4	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	attendants	attendant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
9	eager	eager	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	minister	minister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	wants	want	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  | a crowd of attendants |  | beard's chair |  | to beard's wants; eager minister *obl* | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent crowd=Theme behind chair=Destination |
| 2 | **want** |  | beard |  |  |  |  |  | nom want «state transitive»: poss=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 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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