---
title: It was sad, indeed, to hear the mother wailing aloud for her little… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: It was sad, indeed, to hear the mother wailing aloud for her little son. Who acts: search, mother. 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 35

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It was sad, indeed, to hear the mother wailing aloud for her little son.

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**Who acts:** search, mother · **What happens:** be, hear, wail · **To what, where:** mother

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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 (search, mother), 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:pg338:12:35
# text = It was sad, indeed, to hear the mother wailing aloud for her little son.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	wailing	wail	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	aloud	aloud	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | search |  |  |  |  | sad *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **hear** | to-infinitive | search *not said here* | the mother |  |  |  | indeed *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer mother=Stimulus |
| 3 | **wail** | gerund | the mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for mother's little son; aloud *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient S\_INF»: agent=Agent for son=Recipient |

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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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