---
title: What would you say if you could see the prince I have just been look… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: What would you say if you could see the prince I have just been looking at and whose beauty is really transcendent? Who acts: you, I, beauty. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 23, 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/pg128/23/48/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 23, sentence 48

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What would you say if you could see the prince I have just been looking at and whose beauty is really transcendent?

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**Who acts:** you, I, beauty · **What happens:** say, see, look, be · **To what, where:** prince · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I, beauty), 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:pg128:23:48
# text = What would you say if you could see the prince I have just been looking at and whose beauty is really transcendent?
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
12	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
13	just	just	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	aux	_	_
15	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	ccomp	_	_
16	at	at	ADP	IN	_	15	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
18	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	beauty	beauty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
20	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
21	really	really	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	transcendent	transcendent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | would | you |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **see** *a condition, not said to happen* | could | you | the prince |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer prince=Stimulus |
| 3 | **look** | present · perfect · progressive | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 4 | **is** | present | beauty |  |  |  |  | transcendent *property* | tree rules |

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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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