---
title: Presently the little man paused beside an aspen, smooth of bark, and… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Presently the little man paused beside an aspen, smooth of bark, and tall and graceful. Who acts: little man. 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 57

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Presently the little man paused beside an aspen, smooth of bark, and tall and graceful.

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**Who acts:** little man · **What happens:** pause, smooth · **To what, where:** aspen, bark

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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 (little man), 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:pg66819:13:57
# text = Presently the little man paused beside an aspen, smooth of bark, and tall and graceful.
1	Presently	presently	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	paused	pause	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	aspen	aspen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	smooth	smooth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	bark	bark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	parataxis	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	graceful	graceful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pause** | participle | the little man |  |  | a aspen and smooth of bark |  | presently *property* | vn linger-53.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent beside aspen=Location |
| 2 | **smooth** |  |  | bark |  |  |  |  | nom smooth «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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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