---
title: The Mistress was reclining upon her couch beside the hearth. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The Mistress was reclining upon her couch beside the hearth. Who acts: Mistress. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Field of Serpents, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Field of Serpents, sentence 128

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The Mistress was reclining upon her couch beside the hearth.

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**Who acts:** Mistress · **What happens:** recline · **To what, where:** hearth

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Field of Serpents. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mistress), 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:pg66819:24:128
# text = The Mistress was reclining upon her couch beside the hearth.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Mistress	mistress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	reclining	recline	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	couch	couch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	hearth	hearth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **recline** | past · progressive | the Mistress |  |  | the hearth |  | upon Mistress's couch | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent upon couch=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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