---
title: Travellers’ tales are wondrous, pleasing; but only fools believe the… — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Travellers’ tales are wondrous, pleasing; but only fools believe them.” Who acts: tales, fools, Travellers. 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 111

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Travellers’ tales are wondrous, pleasing; but only fools believe them.”

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**Who acts:** tales, fools, Travellers · **What happens:** be, please, believe, tell · **To what, where:** 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 Smithy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tales, fools, Travellers), 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:pg66819:7:111
# text = Travellers’ tales are wondrous, pleasing; but only fools believe them.”
1	Travellers	traveller	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
3	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	wondrous	wondrous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	pleasing	please	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	fools	fool	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	believe	believe	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
13	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | Travellers's tales |  |  |  |  | wondrous *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **please** | gerund | Travellers's tales *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **believe** | present | fools | tales *= tale* |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |
| 4 | **tell** |  | Travellers |  |  |  |  |  | nom tale «communication intransitive»: poss=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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