---
title: With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy braids and… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy braids and painted their cheeks with bright red paint. Who acts: fingers. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iya, the Camp-eater, 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/pg338/13/31/)

<!-- 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/) / [Iya, the Camp-eater](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/13/) / 31

# Old Indian Legends, Iya, the Camp-eater, sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy braids and painted their cheeks with bright red paint.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** fingers · **What happens:** twist, paint · **To what, where:** hair, glossy braids, cheeks

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iya, the Camp-eater. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fingers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg338:13:31
# text = With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy braids and painted their cheeks with bright red paint.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	excited	excited	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	twisted	twist	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	into	into	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	glossy	glossy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	braids	braid	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	painted	paint	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	cheeks	cheek	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	bright	bright	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
17	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	paint	paint	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **twist** | past | fingers *= finger* | fingers's hair |  | glossy braids |  | with excited fingers | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent hair=Theme into braid=Trajectory |
| 2 | **paint** | past | fingers *= finger* *not said here* | fingers's cheeks |  |  |  | with bright red paint | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: agent=Agent cheek=Destination with paint=Theme |

<!-- .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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/13/30/)
- next →: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/13/32/)
- ↑ back to [Iya, the Camp-eater](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/13/)