---
title: The creek was seething with the dancing of round black things. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The creek was seething with the dancing of round black things. Who acts: creek. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Turtle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Turtle, sentence 65

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The creek was seething with the dancing of round black things.

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**Who acts:** creek · **What happens:** seethe, dance · **To what, where:** round black things

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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 (creek), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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 {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg338:10:65
# text = The creek was seething with the dancing of round black things.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	creek	creek	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	seething	seethe	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	round	round	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seethe** | past · progressive | the creek |  |  |  |  | with the dancing of round black things | vn bulge-47.5.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Location with dancing=Theme |
| 2 | **dance** |  |  | round black things |  |  |  |  | nom dancing «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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:** «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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