---
title: For mercy's sake give up this mad idea and retire whilst you can." — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: For mercy's sake give up this mad idea and retire whilst you can." A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 25, 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/pg128/25/21/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 25, sentence 21

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For mercy's sake give up this mad idea and retire whilst you can."

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**What happens:** give up, retire · **To what, where:** mad idea

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg128:25:21
# text = For mercy's sake give up this mad idea and retire whilst you can."
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	mercy	mercy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	sake	sake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
5	give	give	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	up	up	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
8	mad	mad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	retire	retire	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
12	whilst	whilst	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give up** | present |  | this mad idea |  |  |  | for mercy's sake | vn resign-10.11-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent idea=Source |
| 2 | **retire** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn resign-10.11-1 «NP V»: agent=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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