---
title: For a starving man, you seem to have a very small appetite." — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: For a starving man, you seem to have a very small appetite." Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 21, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 21, sentence 110

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For a starving man, you seem to have a very small appetite."

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** starve, seem, have · **To what, where:** small appetite

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg128:21:110
# text = For a starving man, you seem to have a very small appetite."
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	starving	starve	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	amod	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	seem	seem	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	very	very	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	appetite	appetite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **starve** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **seem** | present | you |  |  |  |  | for a starving man | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 3 | **have** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | a small appetite |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent appetite=Patient |

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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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