---
title: They have requested me, Madam, to be their mouthpiece." — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: They have requested me, Madam, to be their mouthpiece." Who acts: ladies. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 7, 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/pg128/7/15/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 7, sentence 15

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They have requested me, Madam, to be their mouthpiece."

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**Who acts:** ladies · **What happens:** request, be · **To what, where:** me, mouthpiece

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ladies), 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:pg128:7:15
# text = They have requested me, Madam, to be their mouthpiece."
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	requested	request	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	Madam	Madam	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
10	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	mouthpiece	mouthpiece	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **request** | present · perfect | ladies *= lady* |  | me |  |  | Madam *obl* | vn beg-58.2 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | to-infinitive |  | ladies's mouthpiece |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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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