---
title: Who better than he could be the Minstrel’s helper? — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Who better than he could be the Minstrel’s helper? Who acts: dwarf. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unfinished Boat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Unfinished Boat, sentence 54

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Who better than he could be the Minstrel’s helper?

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**Who acts:** dwarf · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unfinished Boat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dwarf), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66819:13:54
# text = Who better than he could be the Minstrel’s helper?
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	2	nsubj	_	_
2	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
3	than	than	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Minstrel	Minstrel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’s	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	helper	helper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | could | dwarf |  |  |  |  | than the Minstrel's helper; the Minstrel *nmod:poss* | tree rules |

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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 Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (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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