---
title: The capital was utterly unprepared to stand a siege, and seeing that… — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: The capital was utterly unprepared to stand a siege, and seeing that resistance was useless, at once opened its gates. Who acts: capital, resistance. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 8, sentence 11

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The capital was utterly unprepared to stand a siege, and seeing that resistance was useless, at once opened its gates.

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**Who acts:** capital, resistance · **What happens:** be, stand, see, open · **To what, where:** siege, gates · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (capital, resistance), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg128:704`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg128:8:11
# text = The capital was utterly unprepared to stand a siege, and seeing that resistance was useless, at once opened its gates.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	capital	capital	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	utterly	utterly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	unprepared	unprepared	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	stand	stand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	siege	siege	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
12	seeing	see	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	20	advcl	_	_
13	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
14	resistance	resistance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	ccomp	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
18	at	at	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	20	advmod	_	_
20	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
21	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	22	nmod:poss	_	_
22	gates	gate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the capital |  |  |  |  | unprepared, utterly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **stand** | to-infinitive | the capital *not said here* | a siege |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer siege=Stimulus |
| 3 | **see** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **is** | past | resistance |  |  |  |  | useless *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **open** | past | the capital *not said here* | resistance's gates |  |  |  | once *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location gate=Theme |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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