---
title: On each stake he fastened a duck to roast. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: On each stake he fastened a duck to roast. Who acts: IKTOMI. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Ducks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Ducks, sentence 102

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On each stake he fastened a duck to roast.

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**Who acts:** IKTOMI · **What happens:** fasten, roast · **To what, where:** duck

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Ducks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (IKTOMI), 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:pg338:2:102
# text = On each stake he fastened a duck to roast.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	det	_	_
3	stake	stake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	fastened	fasten	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	roast	roast	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fasten** | past | IKTOMI | a duck |  |  |  | on each stake | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent duck=Patient on stake=Co-Patient |
| 2 | **roast** | to-infinitive | IKTOMI *not said here* | a duck *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn cooking-45.3 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

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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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