Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Ducks, sentence 11
He prefers to spread a snare rather than to earn the smallest thing with honest hunting.
Who acts: IKTOMI · What happens: prefer, spread, earn · To what, where: snare, smallest thing
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Ducks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (IKTOMI), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 prefers | nsubj |
| 2 | prefers | prefer | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 spread | mark |
| 4 | spread | spread | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 prefers | xcomp |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 snare | det |
| 6 | snare | snare | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 spread | obj |
| 7 | rather | rather | ADV | ExtPos=CCONJ | 10 earn | cc |
| 8 | than | than | ADP | _ | 7 rather | fixed |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 earn | mark |
| 10 | earn | earn | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 spread | conj |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 thing | det |
| 12 | smallest | small | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 13 thing | amod |
| 13 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 earn | obj |
| 14 | with | with | ADP | _ | 16 hunting | case |
| 15 | honest | honest | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 hunting | amod |
| 16 | hunting | hunting | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 earn | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 prefers | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | prefer | present | IKTOMI | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | spread not said to happen | to-infinitive | IKTOMI not said here | a snare | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location snare=Theme | ||||
| 3 | earn | to-infinitive | IKTOMI not said here | the smallest thing | with honest hunting | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Theme |
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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/11/