---
title: How should I, when I never saw her before?" — The Arabian Nights Entertainments · tree and pragmatics
description: How should I, when I never saw her before?" Who acts: I. 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/pg128/9/28/)

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# The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 9, sentence 28

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How should I, when I never saw her before?"

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not see · **To what, where:** princess

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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), 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:pg128:9:28
# text = How should I, when I never saw her before?"
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
2	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | should | I | princess |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer she=Stimulus |

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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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