---
title: "Alas! why should you kill me?" cried the fisherman. " — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: "Alas! why should you kill me?" cried the fisherman. " Who acts: you, fisherman. 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 90

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"Alas! why should you kill me?" cried the fisherman. "

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**Who acts:** you, fisherman · **What happens:** kill, cry · **To what, where:** fisherman · **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 (you, fisherman), 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:pg128:3:90
# text = "Alas! why should you kill me?" cried the fisherman. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
5	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	kill	kill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	parataxis	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** *in a quote* | should | you | the fisherman *= fisherman* |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the fisherman |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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