---
title: Wringing his hands and rending his beard, he exclaimed: — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Wringing his hands and rending his beard, he exclaimed: Who acts: father. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 28, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 28, sentence 49

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Wringing his hands and rending his beard, he exclaimed:

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**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** wring, rend, exclaim · **To what, where:** hands, beard

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father), 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:pg128:28:49
# text = Wringing his hands and rending his beard, he exclaimed:
1	Wringing	wring	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	rending	rend	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	1	conj	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	beard	beard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	exclaimed	exclaim	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wring** | gerund | father *not said here* | father's hands |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |
| 2 | **rend** | gerund | father *not said here* | father's beard |  |  |  |  | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent beard=Patient |
| 3 | **exclaim** *speech: express* | past | father |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: 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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