---
title: Retire, I pray you, lest a crowd should gather in front of my shop." — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Retire, I pray you, lest a crowd should gather in front of my shop." Who acts: you, I, crowd. 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 76

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Retire, I pray you, lest a crowd should gather in front of my shop."

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**Who acts:** you, I, crowd · **What happens:** retire, pray, gather · **To what, where:** you, front

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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, I, crowd), 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:pg128:36:76
# text = Retire, I pray you, lest a crowd should gather in front of my shop."
1	Retire	retire	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	pray	pray	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	lest	lest	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	gather	gather	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	shop	shop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **retire** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn resign-10.11-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **pray** | present | I | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **gather** | should | a crowd |  |  | front of my shop |  |  | vn herd-47.5.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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