---
title: "What news?" asked the prince. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: "What news?" asked the prince. Who acts: news. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 24, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 24, sentence 4

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"What news?" asked the prince.

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**Who acts:** news · **What happens:** news, ask · **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 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (news), 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:pg128:24:4
# text = "What news?" asked the prince.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	_
3	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **news** *in a quote* |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | news |  | the prince |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent prince=Recipient |

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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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