---
title: Not even a night bird twittered to help him out of his predicament. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Not even a night bird twittered to help him out of his predicament. Who acts: night bird. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Manstin, the Rabbit, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Manstin, the Rabbit, sentence 89

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Not even a night bird twittered to help him out of his predicament.

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**Who acts:** night bird · **What happens:** not twitter, help · **To what, where:** bird, predicament

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Manstin, the Rabbit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (night bird), 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:pg338:14:89
# text = Not even a night bird twittered to help him out of his predicament.
1	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
2	even	even	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	twittered	twitter	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	predicament	predicament	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **twitter** | past | a night bird |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **help** | to-infinitive | a night bird *not said here* |  | bird | bird's predicament |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Beneficiary |

<!-- .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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