---
title: "I believed it," answered the Sultan, "because the women attending o… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: "I believed it," answered the Sultan, "because the women attending on her told me so." Who acts: Sultan, women. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 44, 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/pg128/44/49/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 44, sentence 49

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"I believed it," answered the Sultan, "because the women attending on her told me so."

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**Who acts:** Sultan, women · **What happens:** believe, answer, attend, tell · **To what, where:** cucumber, Sultan · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 44. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sultan, women), 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:pg128:44:49
# text = "I believed it," answered the Sultan, "because the women attending on her told me so."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	believed	believe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
7	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Sultan	Sultan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
15	attending	attend	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	14	acl	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	_
18	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
19	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	iobj	_	_
20	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **believe** *in a quote* | past | the Sultan *= sultan* | cucumber |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the Sultan |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **attend** *in a quote* | gerund | the women *not said here* |  |  |  |  | on princess | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent on she=Theme |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | the women |  | the Sultan *= sultan* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |

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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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