---
title: The sky was cloudless and gray and the ground was parched and dry fo… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The sky was cloudless and gray and the ground was parched and dry for long lack of rain. Who acts: sky. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Famine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Famine, sentence 2

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The sky was cloudless and gray and the ground was parched and dry for long lack of rain.

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**Who acts:** sky · **What happens:** be, parch, lack · **To what, where:** ground, rain

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Famine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sky), 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:pg66819:32:2
# text = The sky was cloudless and gray and the ground was parched and dry for long lack of rain.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	cloudless	cloudless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	gray	gray	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	parched	parch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	conj	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	lack	lack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the sky |  |  |  |  | cloudless *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | the sky *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **parch** | past · passive |  | the ground |  |  |  | for long lack of rain | vn cooking-45.3 «NP V NP.patient»: subject=Patient |
| 4 | **lack** |  |  | rain |  |  |  |  | nom lack «state transitive»: of=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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