---
title: But he only drew in stones, shells, and mud. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: But he only drew in stones, shells, and mud. Who acts: sire. 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 69

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But he only drew in stones, shells, and mud.

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**Who acts:** sire · **What happens:** draw · **To what, where:** stones

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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 (sire), 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:pg128:3:69
# text = But he only drew in stones, shells, and mud.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	drew	draw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	stones	stone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	shells	shell	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	mud	mud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **draw** | past | sire |  |  | stones and shells |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent in stone=Destination |

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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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