---
title: Balsora was the capital of a kingdom long tributary to the caliph. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Balsora was the capital of a kingdom long tributary to the caliph. Who acts: Balsora. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 27, 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/pg128/27/87/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 27, sentence 87

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Balsora was the capital of a kingdom long tributary to the caliph.

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**Who acts:** Balsora · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** capital

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 27. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Balsora), 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:pg128:27:87
# text = Balsora was the capital of a kingdom long tributary to the caliph.
1	Balsora	Balsora	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	capital	capital	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	kingdom	kingdom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
8	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	tributary	tributary	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	caliph	caliph	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Balsora | the capital |  |  |  | of a long tributary to the caliph | 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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