---
title: They lose both taste and colour, and are only fit to be thrown away." — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: They lose both taste and colour, and are only fit to be thrown away." Who acts: merchants. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 37, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 37, sentence 4

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They lose both taste and colour, and are only fit to be thrown away."

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**Who acts:** merchants · **What happens:** lose, be, throw away · **To what, where:** taste

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 37. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merchants), 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:pg128:37:4
# text = They lose both taste and colour, and are only fit to be thrown away."
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	lose	lose	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	4	det	_	_
4	taste	taste	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	colour	colour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	fit	fit	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	thrown	throw	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	xcomp	_	_
15	away	away	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lose** | present | merchants *= merchant* | both taste and colour |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent taste=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is** | present | merchants *= merchant* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | fit *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **throw away** | to-infinitive · passive | merchants *= merchant* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle» |

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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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