---
title: He spoke in tones that were soft and pleading: — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He spoke in tones that were soft and pleading: Who acts: Graybeard, tones. 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 66

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He spoke in tones that were soft and pleading:

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**Who acts:** Graybeard, tones · **What happens:** speak, be, plead · **To what, where:** tones · **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 (Graybeard, tones), 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:pg66819:4:66
# text = He spoke in tones that were soft and pleading:
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	tones	tone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	acl:relcl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	pleading	plead	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | Graybeard |  |  | tones |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | tones |  |  |  |  | soft *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **plead** *speech: request* | gerund | tones *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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