---
title: They were telling pleasant tales of their neighbors and of goblins a… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: They were telling pleasant tales of their neighbors and of goblins and ghosts and unnamable things. Who acts: Hail, neighbors. 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 20

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They were telling pleasant tales of their neighbors and of goblins and ghosts and unnamable things.

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**Who acts:** Hail, neighbors · **What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** pleasant tales · **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 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 (Hail, neighbors), 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:pg66819:4:20
# text = They were telling pleasant tales of their neighbors and of goblins and ghosts and unnamable things.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	pleasant	pleasant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	neighbors	neighbor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	goblins	goblin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	ghosts	ghost	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	unnamable	unnamable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · progressive | Hail | pleasant tales of Hail's neighbors and goblins and ghosts and unnamable things |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent tale=Recipient |
| 2 | **tell** |  | Hail's neighbors and goblins and ghosts and unnamable things |  |  |  |  |  | nom tale «communication intransitive»: of=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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