---
title: Around his waist was a magic girdle fastened with gold buckles. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Around his waist was a magic girdle fastened with gold buckles. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unexpected Journey, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Unexpected Journey, sentence 120

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Around his waist was a magic girdle fastened with gold buckles.

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**What happens:** be, fasten · **To what, where:** magic girdle, waist

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unexpected Journey. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg66819:20:120
# text = Around his waist was a magic girdle fastened with gold buckles.
1	Around	around	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	waist	waist	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	magic	magic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	girdle	girdle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	fastened	fasten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	acl	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	buckles	buckle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | a magic girdle |  | Smith's waist |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **fasten** | participle |  | a magic girdle *not said here* |  |  |  | with gold buckles | vn shake-22.3-2-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent with buckle=Co-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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