---
title: The Sultana told a story, and the Sultan let her live to finish it. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: The Sultana told a story, and the Sultan let her live to finish it. Who acts: Sultana, Sultan, sister. 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 30

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The Sultana told a story, and the Sultan let her live to finish it.

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**Who acts:** Sultana, Sultan, sister · **What happens:** tell, let, live, finish · **To what, where:** story, sister · **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 (Sultana, Sultan, sister), 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:pg128:2:30
# text = The Sultana told a story, and the Sultan let her live to finish it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Sultana	Sultana	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Sultan	Sultan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	let	let	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	finish	finish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the Sultana | a story |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |
| 2 | **let** | past | the Sultan | sister |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **live** | infinitive | sister *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **finish** | to-infinitive | sister *not said here* | story |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Subeventuality it=Eventuality |

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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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