---
title: “Its topmost branches brush the sky. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Its topmost branches brush the sky. Who acts: topmost branches. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Smithy, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Smithy, sentence 105

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“Its topmost branches brush the sky.

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**Who acts:** topmost branches · **What happens:** brush · **To what, where:** sky

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Smithy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (topmost branches), 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:pg66819:7:105
# text = “Its topmost branches brush the sky.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	topmost	topmost	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	branches	branch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	brush	brush	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **brush** *in a quote* | present | tree's topmost branches | the sky |  |  |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent sky=Theme |

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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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