---
title: “Was it not I who hammered the sky? — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Was it not I who hammered the sky? Who acts: task, Ilmarinen. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Field of Serpents, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Field of Serpents, sentence 23

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“Was it not I who hammered the sky?

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**Who acts:** task, Ilmarinen · **What happens:** not be, hammer · **To what, where:** Ilmarinen, sky

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Field of Serpents. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (task, Ilmarinen), 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:pg66819:24:23
# text = “Was it not I who hammered the sky?
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	hammered	hammer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** *in a quote* | past | task | Ilmarinen |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hammer** *in a quote* | past | Ilmarinen | the sky |  |  |  | who *nsubj* | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sky=Patient |

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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 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/24/22/)
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