---
title: The skilfulest smith can never fashion fish-bones into anything of v… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The skilfulest smith can never fashion fish-bones into anything of value.” Who acts: skilfulest smith. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Kantele, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Kantele, sentence 67

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The skilfulest smith can never fashion fish-bones into anything of value.”

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**Who acts:** skilfulest smith · **What happens:** not fashion · **To what, where:** fish bones, anything

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Kantele. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (skilfulest smith), 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:pg66819:34:67
# text = The skilfulest smith can never fashion fish-bones into anything of value.”
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	skilfulest	skilful	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	3	amod	_	_
3	smith	smith	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	fashion	fashion	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
10	into	into	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	6	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	value	value	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **fashion** | can | the skilfulest smith | fish bones |  | anything of value |  |  | vn build-26.1 «NP V NP.material PP.product»: agent=Agent bone=Material into anything=Product |

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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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