---
title: Let old Growler howl; I have no time to bother with dogs.” — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: Let old Growler howl; I have no time to bother with dogs.” Who acts: you, I. 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 51

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Let old Growler howl; I have no time to bother with dogs.”

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** let, have, bother · **To what, where:** old Growler 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 (you, I), 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:pg66819:22:51
# text = Let old Growler howl; I have no time to bother with dogs.”
1	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	Growler	Growler	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	howl	howl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
8	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	9	det	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	bother	bother	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	acl	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | old Growler howl |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent howl=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | present | I |  |  |  | time |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **bother** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with dogs | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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