---
title: My wood is soft and pithy; it would never float upon the water. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: My wood is soft and pithy; it would never float upon the water. Who acts: wood, grub. 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 66

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My wood is soft and pithy; it would never float upon the water.

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**Who acts:** wood, grub · **What happens:** be, not float · **To what, where:** water

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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 (wood, grub), 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:pg66819:13:66
# text = My wood is soft and pithy; it would never float upon the water.
1	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	pithy	pithy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	float	float	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
12	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | My wood |  |  |  |  | soft *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | My wood *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **float** | would | grub |  |  | the water |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme upon water=Trajectory |

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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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