---
title: With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along benea… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along beneath his burden. Who acts: figure. 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 38

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With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along beneath his burden.

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**Who acts:** figure · **What happens:** prop up, stagger, burden · **To what, where:** figure, burden

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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 (figure), 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:pg338:2:38
# text = With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along beneath his burden.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	willow	willow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	cane	cane	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	propped	prop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	6	obj	_	_
8	up	up	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
9	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	staggered	stagger	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
12	along	along	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	burden	burden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prop up** | past | figure | figure |  |  |  | with a willow cane | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent himself=Theme |
| 2 | **stagger** | past | figure |  |  | figure's burden |  | along *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme beneath burden=Trajectory |
| 3 | **burden** |  | figure |  |  |  |  |  | nom burden «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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