---
title: “Listen then,” said the cunning Mistress. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Listen then,” said the cunning Mistress. Who acts: cunning Mistress. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Great Pike, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Great Pike, sentence 32

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“Listen then,” said the cunning Mistress.

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**Who acts:** cunning Mistress · **What happens:** listen, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Great Pike. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cunning 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:pg66819:25:32
# text = “Listen then,” said the cunning Mistress.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
3	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	cunning	cunning	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	Mistress	mistress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  | then |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the cunning Mistress |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/25/31/)
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