---
title: Did you ever say anything about them before? — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Did you ever say anything about them before? Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 36, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 36, sentence 72

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Did you ever say anything about them before?

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** do, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 36. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg128:36:72
# text = Did you ever say anything about them before?
1	Did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	4	advmod	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
5	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	8	nsubj	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	_
8	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | you |  |  |  | ever |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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