---
title: The Sultan asked everybody concerned in the hunchback's affair to te… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: The Sultan asked everybody concerned in the hunchback's affair to tell him their stories. Who acts: Sultan. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 20, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 20, sentence 28

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The Sultan asked everybody concerned in the hunchback's affair to tell him their stories.

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**Who acts:** Sultan · **What happens:** ask, tell · **To what, where:** everybody, affair, stories, Sultan · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sultan), 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:pg128:20:28
# text = The Sultan asked everybody concerned in the hunchback's affair to tell him their stories.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Sultan	Sultan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	everybody	everybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	3	iobj	_	_
5	concerned	concerned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	hunchback	hunchback	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	's	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	affair	affair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	iobj	_	_
14	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	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 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the Sultan |  | everybody | the hunchback's affair |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent everybody=Recipient |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | the Sultan *not said here* | circumstances's stories | Sultan |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient story=Topic |

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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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