---
title: Friend or stranger, it mattered not, this man needed help. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Friend or stranger, it mattered not, this man needed help. Who acts: Friend, man. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Hero’s Return, 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/pg66819/16/17/)

<!-- 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 Hero’s Return](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/16/) / 17

# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Hero’s Return, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Friend or stranger, it mattered not, this man needed help.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Friend, man · **What happens:** not matter, need · **To what, where:** help

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Hero’s Return. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Friend, man), 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:pg66819:16:17
# text = Friend or stranger, it mattered not, this man needed help.
1	Friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
2	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	stranger	stranger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	mattered	matter	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	det	_	_
10	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	needed	need	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
12	help	help	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **matter** | past | Friend or stranger |  |  |  |  | it *nsubj* | vn matter-91 «NP V»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **need** | past | this man | help |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot help=Theme |

<!-- .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 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/16/16/)
- next →: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/16/18/)
- ↑ back to [The Hero’s Return](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/16/)