---
title: “How can I sing in a strange land? — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “How can I sing in a strange land? Who acts: Dame. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Mistress and Minstrel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, Mistress and Minstrel, sentence 88

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“How can I sing in a strange land?

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**Who acts:** Dame · **What happens:** sing · **To what, where:** strange land

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Mistress and Minstrel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dame), 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:pg66819:2:88
# text = “How can I sing in a strange land?
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* *in a quote* | can | Dame |  |  | a strange land |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in land=Location |

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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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