---
title: He pulled at his chain and howled most dismally. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: He pulled at his chain and howled most dismally. Who acts: clamor. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Barking Dogs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Barking Dogs, sentence 42

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He pulled at his chain and howled most dismally.

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**Who acts:** clamor · **What happens:** pull, howl

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Barking Dogs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (clamor), 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:pg66819:22:42
# text = He pulled at his chain and howled most dismally.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	chain	chain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	howled	howl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	9	advmod	_	_
9	dismally	dismally	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pull** | past | clamor |  |  |  |  | at clamor's chain | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent at chain=Theme |
| 2 | **howl** | past | clamor *not said here* |  |  |  |  | dismally *property* | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=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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- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/22/41/)
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