---
title: “You cannot save yourselves by howling. — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “You cannot save yourselves by howling. Who acts: You. A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Flight, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Flight, sentence 139

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“You cannot save yourselves by howling.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** not save, howl · **To what, where:** yourselves

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Flight. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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:pg66819:36:139
# text = “You cannot save yourselves by howling.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	save	save	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	yourselves	yourselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	5	obj	_	_
7	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	howling	howl	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **save** *in a quote* | can | You | yourselves |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent yourselves=Theme |
| 2 | **howl** *in a quote* | gerund | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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