---
title: The first of all mothers was Air, and she had three daughters. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The first of all mothers was Air, and she had three daughters. Who acts: first, Air. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Wicked Hornet, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/5/3/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old No…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/) / [The Wicked Hornet](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/5/) / 3

# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Wicked Hornet, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The first of all mothers was Air, and she had three daughters.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** first, Air · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** Air, three daughters

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Wicked Hornet. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (first, Air), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66819:5:3
# text = The first of all mothers was Air, and she had three daughters.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	first	first	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	7	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	5	det	_	_
5	mothers	mother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	Air	Air	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
13	daughters	daughter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | the first of all mothers | Air |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | Air | three daughters |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent daughter=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/5/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/5/4/)
- ↑ back to [The Wicked Hornet](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/5/)