---
title: Was it a sea-gull breasting the morning gale and crying to its mate… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Was it a sea-gull breasting the morning gale and crying to its mate in the shelter of the ragged cliffs? Who acts: spray, sea gull. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/111/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old No…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/) / [The Weeping Ship](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/) / 111

# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Weeping Ship, sentence 111

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Was it a sea-gull breasting the morning gale and crying to its mate in the shelter of the ragged cliffs?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** spray, sea gull · **What happens:** be, breast, cry · **To what, where:** sea gull, morning gale, mate, shelter

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spray, sea gull), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66819:33:111
# text = Was it a sea-gull breasting the morning gale and crying to its mate in the shelter of the ragged cliffs?
1	Was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	gull	gull	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	breasting	breast	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	acl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	gale	gale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	crying	cry	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	conj	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	mate	mate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	shelter	shelter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	ragged	ragged	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	cliffs	cliff	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | spray | a sea gull |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **breast** | gerund | a sea gull *not said here* | the morning gale |  |  |  |  | vn confront-98 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gale=Theme |
| 3 | **cry** *speech: express* | gerund | a sea gull *not said here* |  | spray's mate | the shelter of the ragged cliffs |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to mate=Recipient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 110](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/110/)
- next →: [sentence 112](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/112/)
- ↑ back to [The Weeping Ship](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/)