---
title: It was vain; both blade and handle were useless. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: It was vain; both blade and handle were useless. Who acts: knife, blade. 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 105

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It was vain; both blade and handle were useless.

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**Who acts:** knife, blade · **What happens:** be

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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 (knife, blade), 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:pg66819:29:105
# text = It was vain; both blade and handle were useless.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
5	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	det	_	_
6	blade	blade	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	handle	handle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | knife |  |  |  |  | vain *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | both blade and handle |  |  |  |  | useless *property* | 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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