---
title: It might have been a wildcat prowling low on soft, stealthy feet. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: It might have been a wildcat prowling low on soft, stealthy feet. Who acts: dark, wildcat. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 15

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It might have been a wildcat prowling low on soft, stealthy feet.

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**Who acts:** dark, wildcat · **What happens:** be, prowl · **To what, where:** wildcat, soft stealthy feet

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dark, wildcat), 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:pg338:11:15
# text = It might have been a wildcat prowling low on soft, stealthy feet.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	aux	_	_
4	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	wildcat	wildcat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	prowling	prowl	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	acl	_	_
8	low	low	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	advmod	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
10	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	stealthy	stealthy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | might · perfect | dark | a wildcat |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **prowl** | gerund | a wildcat *not said here* |  |  | soft stealthy feet |  | low *property* | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on foot=Trajectory |

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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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