---
title: “There is no news but of famine and sorrow,” answered the Minstrel. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “There is no news but of famine and sorrow,” answered the Minstrel. Who acts: news, Minstrel. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Triumph of Music, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Triumph of Music, sentence 45

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“There is no news but of famine and sorrow,” answered the Minstrel.

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**Who acts:** news, Minstrel · **What happens:** be, answer · **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, The Triumph of Music. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (news, Minstrel), 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:pg66819:35:45
# text = “There is no news but of famine and sorrow,” answered the Minstrel.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	5	det	_	_
5	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	famine	famine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	sorrow	sorrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
13	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Minstrel	Minstrel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | present | no news |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the Minstrel |  |  |  |  | of famine and sorrow | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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