---
title: He tried to avoid them. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He tried to avoid them. Who acts: Wainamoinen. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Hag of the Rock, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Hag of the Rock, sentence 61

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He tried to avoid them.

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**Who acts:** Wainamoinen · **What happens:** try, avoid · **To what, where:** nets

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Hag of the Rock. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wainamoinen), 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:pg66819:15:61
# text = He tried to avoid them.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	avoid	avoid	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | Wainamoinen |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **avoid** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Wainamoinen *not said here* | nets *= net* |  |  |  |  | vn avoid-52 «NP V NP.location»: agent=Agent they=Location |

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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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