Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Coyote, sentence 45
He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee.
Who acts: Iktomi · What happens: gather, break · To what, where: dry willow sticks, sticks, two
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Coyote. 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 gathered | nsubj |
| 2 | gathered | gather | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | dry | dry | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 sticks | amod |
| 4 | willow | willow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 sticks | compound |
| 5 | sticks | stick | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 gathered | obj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 broke | cc |
| 7 | broke | break | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 gathered | conj |
| 8 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 broke | obj |
| 9 | in | in | ADP | _ | 10 two | case |
| 10 | two | two | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 7 broke | obl |
| 11 | against | against | ADP | _ | 13 knee | case |
| 12 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 13 knee | nmod:poss |
| 13 | knee | knee | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 broke | obl |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 gathered | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | gather | past | Iktomi | dry willow sticks | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=Theme | ||||
| 2 | break | past | Iktomi not said here | sticks = stick | two | against Iktomi's knee | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/5/45/