---
title: Never saw I a wiser woman, although she is not strikingly fair. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Never saw I a wiser woman, although she is not strikingly fair. Who acts: woman. 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 49

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Never saw I a wiser woman, although she is not strikingly fair.

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**Who acts:** woman · **What happens:** not see, not be · **To what, where:** I

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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 (woman), 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:pg66819:7:49
# text = Never saw I a wiser woman, although she is not strikingly fair.
1	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
2	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	wiser	wise	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	amod	_	_
6	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	although	although	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	strikingly	strikingly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | past |  | I |  |  |  | a wiser woman *obj* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **is** | present | woman |  |  |  |  | fair, strikingly *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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