Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Ducks, sentence 38

With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along beneath his burden.

Who acts: figure · What happens: prop up, stagger, burden · To what, where: figure, burden

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 (figure), 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	With	with	ADP	_	4 cane	case
2	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 cane	det
3	willow	willow	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 cane	compound
4	cane	cane	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 propped	obl
5	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 propped	nsubj
6	propped	prop	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	himself	himself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	6 propped	obj
8	up	up	ADP	_	6 propped	compound:prt
9	as	as	SCONJ	_	11 staggered	mark
10	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 staggered	nsubj
11	staggered	stagger	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 propped	advcl
12	along	along	ADV	_	11 staggered	advmod
13	beneath	beneath	ADP	_	15 burden	case
14	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	15 burden	nmod:poss
15	burden	burden	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 staggered	obl
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 propped	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	prop up	past	figure	figure		with a willow cane	vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent himself=Theme
2	stagger	past	figure		figure's burden	along property	vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme beneath burden=Trajectory
3	burden		figure				nom burden «cognition transitive»: poss=agent

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/pg338/2/38/