---
title: A wonderful thing it was, slender and strong and well fitted for the… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: A wonderful thing it was, slender and strong and well fitted for the work it was designed to do. Who acts: wonderful thing, work. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/72/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old No…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/) / [The Field of Serpents](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/) / 72

# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Field of Serpents, sentence 72

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A wonderful thing it was, slender and strong and well fitted for the work it was designed to do.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wonderful thing, work · **What happens:** be, fit, design, do · **To what, where:** thing

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (wonderful thing, work), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66819:24:72
# text = A wonderful thing it was, slender and strong and well fitted for the work it was designed to do.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	wonderful	wonderful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	slender	slender	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	12	advmod	_	_
12	fitted	fit	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	conj	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux:pass	_	_
18	designed	design	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	acl:relcl	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | a wonderful thing |  |  |  |  | thing *nsubj*; slender *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | a wonderful thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **fit** | participle | a wonderful thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for the work; well *property* | vn adjust-26.9 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **design** | past · passive | the work *not said here* | thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **do** | to-infinitive | the work *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 71](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/71/)
- next →: [sentence 73](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/73/)
- ↑ back to [The Field of Serpents](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/)