---
title: He picked up the broken blade and tried to fit it in the handle. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He picked up the broken blade and tried to fit it in the handle. Who acts: slave. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Slave Boy, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Slave Boy, sentence 104

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He picked up the broken blade and tried to fit it in the handle.

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**Who acts:** slave · **What happens:** pick up, break, try, fit · **To what, where:** broken blade, knife, handle

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Slave Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (slave), 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:pg66819:29:104
# text = He picked up the broken blade and tried to fit it in the handle.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	picked	pick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	up	up	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	broken	break	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	amod	_	_
6	blade	blade	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	fit	fit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	handle	handle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	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 | **pick up** | past | slave | the broken blade |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blade=Topic |
| 2 | **break** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **try** | past | slave *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **fit** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | slave *not said here* | knife |  | the handle |  |  | vn funnel-9.3-1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent it=Theme in handle=Trajectory |

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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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