---
title: "Forgive my ignorance," he asked, "what is this palace you speak of?" — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: "Forgive my ignorance," he asked, "what is this palace you speak of?" Who acts: you, magician, my. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 32, sentence 4

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"Forgive my ignorance," he asked, "what is this palace you speak of?"

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**Who acts:** you, magician, my · **What happens:** forgive, ask, be, speak, ignore · **To what, where:** ignorance, palace · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, magician, my), 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:pg128:32:4
# text = "Forgive my ignorance," he asked, "what is this palace you speak of?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Forgive	forgive	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	ignorance	ignorance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	14	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	det	_	_
14	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	acl:relcl	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **forgive** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | my ignorance |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ignorance=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | magician |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | this palace |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | you | this palace *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **ignore** *in a quote* |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom ignorance «cognition transitive»: poss=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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