---
title: Overcome with despair we sank trembling to the ground, and lay there… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Overcome with despair we sank trembling to the ground, and lay there without speech or motion. Who acts: you, we. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 15, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 15, sentence 5

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Overcome with despair we sank trembling to the ground, and lay there without speech or motion.

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**Who acts:** you, we · **What happens:** overcome, sink, tremble, lie · **To what, where:** despair

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, we), 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:pg128:15:5
# text = Overcome with despair we sank trembling to the ground, and lay there without speech or motion.
1	Overcome	overcome	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	with	with	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	despair	despair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	sank	sink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	_
6	trembling	tremble	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	xcomp	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
13	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	advmod	_	_
14	without	without	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	speech	speech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	motion	motion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **overcome** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with despair | vn exceed-90 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **sink** | past | we | despair *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tremble** | gerund | we *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to the ground | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **lie** | past |  |  |  | there |  | without speech or motion | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=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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