---
title: Very closely watched the old toad mother her stolen human son. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Very closely watched the old toad mother her stolen human son. 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 87

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Very closely watched the old toad mother her stolen human son.

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**What happens:** watch, steal · **To what, where:** old toad 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: 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:pg338:12:87
# text = Very closely watched the old toad mother her stolen human son.
1	Very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	closely	closely	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	watched	watch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	toad	toad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
9	stolen	steal	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	amod	_	_
10	human	human	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **watch** | past |  | the old toad mother |  |  |  | closely *property* | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP.attribute»: agent=Agent mother=Theme son=Attribute |
| 2 | **steal** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=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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