---
title: “Any man can kill snakes. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “Any man can kill snakes. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Great Pike, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Great Pike, sentence 22

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“Any man can kill snakes.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** kill · **To what, where:** snakes

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Great Pike. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg66819:25:22
# text = “Any man can kill snakes.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	3	det	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	kill	kill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	snakes	snake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** *in a quote* | can | any man | snakes |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent snake=Theme |

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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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