---
title: All the ducks sat round-eyed in a circle about the mysterious singer. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: All the ducks sat round-eyed in a circle about the mysterious singer. Who acts: ducks. 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 68

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All the ducks sat round-eyed in a circle about the mysterious singer.

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**Who acts:** ducks · **What happens:** sit, eye · **To what, where:** circle

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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 (ducks), 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:pg338:2:68
# text = All the ducks sat round-eyed in a circle about the mysterious singer.
1	All	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	3	det:predet	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	ducks	duck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	round	round	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	eyed	eye	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	xcomp	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	circle	circle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	about	about	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	mysterious	mysterious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	singer	singer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | all ducks |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **eye** | participle | all ducks *not said here* |  |  | a circle about the mysterious singer |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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