---
title: A servant soon appeared, feeling her way down the dark staircase and… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: A servant soon appeared, feeling her way down the dark staircase and inquired what they wanted. Who acts: servant, tailor. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 19, sentence 33

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A servant soon appeared, feeling her way down the dark staircase and inquired what they wanted.

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**Who acts:** servant, tailor · **What happens:** appear, feel, inquire, want · **To what, where:** way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servant, tailor), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg128:1576`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg128:19:33
# text = A servant soon appeared, feeling her way down the dark staircase and inquired what they wanted.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
4	appeared	appear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	feeling	feel	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
7	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	down	down	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	staircase	staircase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
15	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	17	obj	_	_
16	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	ccomp	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **appear** | past | a servant |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **feel** | gerund | a servant *not said here* | servant's way |  |  |  | down the dark staircase | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Theme |
| 3 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | a servant *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **want** | past | tailor |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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