---
title: The merchant, protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and childr… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: The merchant, protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and children, and tried pitifully to avert his fate. Who acts: merchant. 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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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 2, sentence 16

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The merchant, protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and children, and tried pitifully to avert his fate.

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**Who acts:** merchant · **What happens:** protest, bewail, try, avert, fate · **To what, where:** innocence, wife, fate

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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 (merchant), 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:pg128:2:16
# text = The merchant, protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and children, and tried pitifully to avert his fate.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	merchant	merchant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	protesting	protest	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	innocence	innocence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
8	bewailed	bewail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
16	pitifully	pitifully	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	avert	avert	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
19	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	fate	fate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **protest** *speech: disagree* | gerund | the merchant *not said here* | merchant's innocence |  |  |  |  | vn rebel-71.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent innocence=Topic |
| 2 | **bewail** | past | the merchant | merchant's wife and children |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer wife=Stimulus |
| 3 | **try** | past | the merchant *not said here* |  |  |  |  | pitifully *property* | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **avert** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the merchant *not said here* | merchant's fate |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **fate** |  | merchant |  |  |  |  |  | nom fate «event 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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