---
title: "He must be quite blind," returned the wife of the chief cook. " — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: "He must be quite blind," returned the wife of the chief cook. " Who acts: Sultan. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 40, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 40, sentence 73

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"He must be quite blind," returned the wife of the chief cook. "

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**Who acts:** Sultan · **What happens:** be, return · **To what, where:** wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 40. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sultan), 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:pg128:40:73
# text = "He must be quite blind," returned the wife of the chief cook. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	blind	blind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
9	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	chief	chief	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	cook	cook	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | must | Sultan |  |  |  |  | blind *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **return** | past |  | the wife of the chief cook |  |  |  |  | vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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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