---
title: Then one day a little boat came creeping into the harbor with but on… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Then one day a little boat came creeping into the harbor with but one man on board. Who acts: little boat. 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 7

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Then one day a little boat came creeping into the harbor with but one man on board.

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**Who acts:** little boat · **What happens:** come, creep · **To what, where:** harbor

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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 (little boat), 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:pg66819:32:7
# text = Then one day a little boat came creeping into the harbor with but one man on board.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
2	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	nummod	_	_
3	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	creeping	creep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	xcomp	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	harbor	harbor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	board	board	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a little boat |  |  |  | then; day |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **creep** | gerund | a little boat *not said here* |  |  | the harbor |  | with one man on board | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into harbor=Destination |

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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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