---
title: “Ha! how sleek the milkers are to-night!” says the wife and helpmate. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Ha! how sleek the milkers are to-night!” says the wife and helpmate. Who acts: milkers, wife. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, A Dreadful Vengeance, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, A Dreadful Vengeance, sentence 32

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“Ha! how sleek the milkers are to-night!” says the wife and helpmate.

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**Who acts:** milkers, wife · **What happens:** sleek, be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, A Dreadful Vengeance. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (milkers, wife), 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:pg66819:30:32
# text = “Ha! how sleek the milkers are to-night!” says the wife and helpmate.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ha	ha	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
5	sleek	sleek	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	milkers	milker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	helpmate	helpmate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sleek** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | the milkers |  |  |  | to night |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: express* | present | the wife and helpmate |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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