---
title: He told him that he wished him to play at polo. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: He told him that he wished him to play at polo. Who acts: physician. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 3, sentence 135

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He told him that he wished him to play at polo.

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**Who acts:** physician · **What happens:** tell, wish, play · **To what, where:** king, polo · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (physician), 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:pg128:3:135
# text = He told him that he wished him to play at polo.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	wished	wish	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	polo	polo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | physician |  | king |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **wish** | past | physician | king |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **play** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | physician *not said here* |  |  | polo |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «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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