---
title: “Never was there better salve than this. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Never was there better salve than this. Who acts: better salve. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Graybeard and His Son, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Graybeard and His Son, sentence 118

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“Never was there better salve than this.

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**Who acts:** better salve · **What happens:** not be

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Graybeard and His Son. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (better salve), 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:pg66819:4:118
# text = “Never was there better salve than this.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	0	root	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	amod	_	_
6	salve	salve	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | past | better salve than this |  |  |  |  | there *property* | tree rules |

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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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