---
title: Who knows whether their petitions may not be answered!" — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Who knows whether their petitions may not be answered!" Who acts: gifts. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 22, 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/pg128/22/67/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 22, sentence 67

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Who knows whether their petitions may not be answered!"

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**Who acts:** gifts · **What happens:** know, not answer, petition · **To what, where:** petitions · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gifts), 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:pg128:22:67
# text = Who knows whether their petitions may not be answered!"
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	2	nsubj	_	_
2	knows	know	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	petitions	petition	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	aux:pass	_	_
9	answered	answer	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **not** **answer** *speech: assert* | may · passive |  | gifts's petitions |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: subject=Eventuality |
| 3 | **petition** |  | gifts *= gift* |  |  |  |  |  | nom petition «communication 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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