---
title: He waved his palms slowly to and fro before his eyes. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He waved his palms slowly to and fro before his eyes. Who acts: man. 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 130

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He waved his palms slowly to and fro before his eyes.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** wave, fro · **To what, where:** palms

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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 (man), 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:pg66819:4:130
# text = He waved his palms slowly to and fro before his eyes.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	waved	wave	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	palms	palm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	fixed	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	fro	fro	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
9	before	before	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wave** | past | man | man's palms |  |  |  | slowly *property* | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent palm=Patient |
| 2 | **fro** | infinitive | man *not said here* |  |  |  | before man's eyes |  | 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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