---
title: “Mother,” went on the child voice, “tell me one thing. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: “Mother,” went on the child voice, “tell me one thing. Who acts: 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 83

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Mother,” went on the child voice, “tell me one thing.

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**Who acts:** Mother · **What happens:** go, tell · **To what, where:** child voice, one thing, pretty creature · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (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:pg338:12:83
# text = “Mother,” went on the child voice, “tell me one thing.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	iobj	_	_
14	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | Mother |  |  | the child voice |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on voice=Location |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive | Mother *not said here* | one thing | the pretty creature *= creature* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient thing=Topic |

<!-- .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.

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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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