Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Turtle, sentence 29

So quick and small were his steps that he seemed to be kicking the ground only.

Who acts: quick steps · What happens: be, seem, kick · To what, where: quick steps, ground

This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Turtle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (quick steps), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	So	so	ADV	_	2 quick	advmod
2	quick	quick	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 steps	amod
3	and	and	CCONJ	_	4 small	cc
4	small	small	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 quick	conj
5	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 steps	cop
6	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	7 steps	nmod:poss
7	steps	step	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 seemed	nsubj
8	that	that	SCONJ	_	10 seemed	mark
9	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 seemed	nsubj
10	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
11	to	to	PART	_	13 kicking	mark
12	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	13 kicking	aux
13	kicking	kick	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 seemed	advcl
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 ground	det
15	ground	ground	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 kicking	obj
16	only	only	ADV	_	13 kicking	advmod
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 seemed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	is a	past		Patkasa's quick steps	tree rules
2	seem	past	Patkasa's quick steps		vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme
3	kick	to-infinitive · progressive	Patkasa's quick steps not said here	the ground	vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent ground=Patient

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.

Text: «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Project Gutenberg book 338 (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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