---
title: I never saw him before," she answered slowly. " — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: I never saw him before," she answered slowly. " Who acts: I, Traitress. A sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9, 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/pg128/9/18/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 9, sentence 18

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I never saw him before," she answered slowly. "

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**Who acts:** I, Traitress · **What happens:** not see, answer · **To what, where:** man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, Traitress), 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:pg128:9:18
# text = I never saw him before," she answered slowly. "
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	before	before	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
10	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | past | I | man |  |  |  | before *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | Traitress |  |  |  |  | slowly *property* | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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