---
title: When I tried to open it heavy clouds of darkness floated before me. — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: When I tried to open it heavy clouds of darkness floated before me. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 34, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
When I tried to open it heavy clouds of darkness floated before me.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** try, open, float, cloud · **To what, where:** ointment, heavy clouds, darkness

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg128:34:19
# text = When I tried to open it heavy clouds of darkness floated before me.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	clouds	cloud	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	darkness	darkness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
11	floated	float	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	acl	_	_
12	before	before	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **open** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | ointment |  |  |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Agent it=Theme cloud=Destination |
| 3 | **float** | participle |  | heavy clouds of darkness *not said here* |  |  | before me |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before i=Trajectory |
| 4 | **cloud** |  |  | darkness |  |  |  |  | nom cloud «phenomenon transitive»: of=patient |

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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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