---
title: The next day the steward asked to speak to me in private. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: The next day the steward asked to speak to me in private. Who acts: steward. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 2, 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/pg128/2/113/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 2, sentence 113

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The next day the steward asked to speak to me in private.

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**Who acts:** steward · **What happens:** ask, speak · **To what, where:** me, private · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (steward), 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:pg128:2:113
# text = The next day the steward asked to speak to me in private.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	next	next	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	steward	steward	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	private	private	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the steward |  |  |  | day |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the steward *not said here* |  | me | private |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to i=Co-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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