---
title: The gentle milk cows, the timid yearlings, even the stolid oxen, wer… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The gentle milk cows, the timid yearlings, even the stolid oxen, were overcome with fear. 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 132

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The gentle milk cows, the timid yearlings, even the stolid oxen, were overcome with fear.

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**What happens:** overcome · **To what, where:** gentle milk cows

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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:pg66819:29:132
# text = The gentle milk cows, the timid yearlings, even the stolid oxen, were overcome with fear.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	gentle	gentle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	cows	cow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	timid	timid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	yearlings	yearling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	even	even	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	stolid	stolid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	oxen	ox	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
15	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	overcome	overcome	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **overcome** | past · passive |  | the gentle milk cows and the timid yearlings and the stolid oxen |  |  |  | with fear | vn exceed-90 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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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