---
title: Can you split a hair with a knife which has no edge? — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Can you split a hair with a knife which has no edge? Who acts: you, knife. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Maid of Beauty, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Maid of Beauty, sentence 52

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Can you split a hair with a knife which has no edge?

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**Who acts:** you, knife · **What happens:** split, have · **To what, where:** hair, edge

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Maid of Beauty. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, knife), 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:pg66819:3:52
# text = Can you split a hair with a knife which has no edge?
1	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	split	split	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	12	det	_	_
12	edge	edge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **split** | can | you | a hair |  |  |  | with a knife | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent hair=Patient with knife=Instrument |
| 2 | **have** | present | a knife | no edge |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent edge=Patient |

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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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