---
title: The bee answered not—it was too busy with its own affairs. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: The bee answered not—it was too busy with its own affairs. Who acts: bee, mixture. 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.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Wicked Hornet, sentence 87

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The bee answered not—it was too busy with its own affairs.

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**Who acts:** bee, mixture · **What happens:** not answer, be

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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 (bee, mixture), 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:pg66819:5:87
# text = The bee answered not—it was too busy with its own affairs.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	bee	bee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	too	too	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	busy	busy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
12	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	affairs	affair	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the bee |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | mixture |  |  |  |  | with mixture's own affairs; busy *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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