---
title: “I will build first a round straw house, for I never sing my songs i… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: “I will build first a round straw house, for I never sing my songs in the open air,” said he. Who acts: IKTOMI, my. 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 61

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“I will build first a round straw house, for I never sing my songs in the open air,” said he.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** IKTOMI, my · **What happens:** build, not sing, say, sing · **To what, where:** round straw house, songs, open air · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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, my), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg338:59`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg338:2:61
# text = “I will build first a round straw house, for I never sing my songs in the open air,” said he.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	build	build	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	23	ccomp	_	_
5	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	4	advmod	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	round	round	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	sing	sing	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
15	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	songs	song	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
22	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
23	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
24	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	23	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **build** *in a quote* | future | IKTOMI | a round straw house |  |  |  | first *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent house=Product |
| 2 | **not** **sing** *speech: express* *in a quote* | present | IKTOMI | my songs |  | the open air |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location song=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | IKTOMI |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **sing** *in a quote* |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom song «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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