---
title: He is whetting his beak. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He is whetting his beak. Who acts: eagle. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Bridegroom’s Triumph, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Bridegroom’s Triumph, sentence 16

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He is whetting his beak.

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**Who acts:** eagle · **What happens:** whet · **To what, where:** beak

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Bridegroom’s Triumph. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eagle), 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:pg66819:26:16
# text = He is whetting his beak.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	whetting	whet	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	beak	beak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **whet** | present · progressive | eagle | eagle's beak |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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