---
title: They met the returning husbands, who turned about and joined in the… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They met the returning husbands, who turned about and joined in the hunt for the missing child. Who acts: tears, returning husbands. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Toad and the Boy, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, The Toad and the Boy, sentence 31

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They met the returning husbands, who turned about and joined in the hunt for the missing child.

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**Who acts:** tears, returning husbands · **What happens:** meet, return, turn about, join · **To what, where:** returning husbands

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Toad and the Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tears, returning husbands), 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:pg338:12:31
# text = They met the returning husbands, who turned about and joined in the hunt for the missing child.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	returning	return	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	amod	_	_
5	husbands	husband	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	about	about	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	joined	join	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	hunt	hunt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
15	for	for	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	missing	missing	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **meet** | past | tears *= tear* | the returning husbands |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent husband=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **return** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **turn about** | past | the returning husbands |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **join** | past | the returning husbands *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for the missing child; in the hunt | vn cooperate-73.1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in hunt=Theme |

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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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