---
title: Tell me, I pray you, if you can, so that I may not have travelled on… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me, I pray you, if you can, so that I may not have travelled on a useless quest." Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 42, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg128/42/3/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 42, sentence 3

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Tell me, I pray you, if you can, so that I may not have travelled on a useless quest."

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** tell, pray, not travell · **To what, where:** me, you, useless quest · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 42. 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), 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:pg128:42:3
# text = Tell me, I pray you, if you can, so that I may not have travelled on a useless quest."
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	pray	pray	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	advcl	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
12	so	so	SCONJ	IN	ExtPos=SCONJ	18	mark	_	_
13	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	fixed	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
15	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
17	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	aux	_	_
18	travelled	travell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	1	parataxis	_	_
19	on	on	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	quest	quest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **pray** | present | I | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **travell** | may · perfect | I |  |  | a useless quest |  |  | tree rules |

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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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