---
title: “What can ail the wretched slave boy?” — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “What can ail the wretched slave boy?” 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 109

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“What can ail the wretched slave boy?”

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**What happens:** ail · **To what, where:** wretched slave boy

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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: 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:pg66819:29:109
# text = “What can ail the wretched slave boy?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	ail	ail	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
6	wretched	wretched	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	slave	slave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ail** *in a quote* | can |  | the wretched slave boy |  |  |  | What *obj* | 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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