---
title: Poor Iktomi cannot help being a little imp. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Poor Iktomi cannot help being a little imp. Who acts: Poor 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 15

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Poor Iktomi cannot help being a little imp.

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**Who acts:** Poor Iktomi · **What happens:** not help, be · **To what, where:** little imp

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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 (Poor 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:pg338:2:15
# text = Poor Iktomi cannot help being a little imp.
1	Poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	Iktomi	Iktomi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	cop	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	imp	imp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	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 | **not** **help** | can | Poor Iktomi |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | gerund |  | a little imp |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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