---
title: “A cat! a cat!” cried other mice as they scrambled out of holes both… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: “A cat! a cat!” cried other mice as they scrambled out of holes both large and snug. Who acts: other mice, mice. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/38/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Old Indian Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/) / [Dance in a Buffalo Skull](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/) / 38

# Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 38

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“A cat! a cat!” cried other mice as they scrambled out of holes both large and snug.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** other mice, mice · **What happens:** cry, scramble · **To what, where:** holes

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (other mice, mice), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg338:957`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg338:11:38
# text = “A cat! a cat!” cried other mice as they scrambled out of holes both large and snug.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	_
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	_
7	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	mice	mouse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
12	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	scrambled	scramble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
15	out	out	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	fixed	_	_
17	holes	hole	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
18	both	both	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc:preconj	_	_
19	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	snug	snug	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	conj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | other mice |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **scramble** | past | mice *= mouse* |  |  | holes |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme out hole=Trajectory |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Project Gutenberg book 338 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/37/)
- next →: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/39/)
- ↑ back to [Dance in a Buffalo Skull](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/)