---
title: “Never was there a greater magician than I,” returned the Minstrel b… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Never was there a greater magician than I,” returned the Minstrel boastfully. Who acts: greater magician. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Mistress and Minstrel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, Mistress and Minstrel, sentence 106

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“Never was there a greater magician than I,” returned the Minstrel boastfully.

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**Who acts:** greater magician · **What happens:** not be, return · **To what, where:** Minstrel

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Mistress and Minstrel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (greater magician), 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:pg66819:2:106
# text = “Never was there a greater magician than I,” returned the Minstrel boastfully.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	advmod	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	greater	great	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	amod	_	_
7	magician	magician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
8	than	than	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Minstrel	Minstrel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	boastfully	boastfully	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | past | a greater magician than I |  |  |  |  | there *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **return** | past |  | the Minstrel |  |  |  | boastfully *property* | vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent minstrel=Theme |

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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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