---
title: He sat down upon the soft robes and took the reins in his hands. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat down upon the soft robes and took the reins in his hands. Who acts: racer. 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 44

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He sat down upon the soft robes and took the reins in his hands.

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**Who acts:** racer · **What happens:** sit down, take · **To what, where:** soft robes, reins, hands

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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 (racer), 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:pg66819:24:44
# text = He sat down upon the soft robes and took the reins in his hands.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	robes	robe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	reins	rein	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | racer |  |  | the soft robes |  | down *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent upon robe=Location |
| 2 | **take** | past | racer *not said here* | the reins |  | racer's hands |  |  | vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent rein=Value in hand=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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