---
title: Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks! — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks! 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/89/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Old Indian Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/) / [Iktomi and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/) / 89

# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Ducks, sentence 89

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks!

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Iktomi · **What happens:** twist, break · **To what, where:** heads, necks

<!-- .vabout -->
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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg338:2:89
# text = Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks!
1	Iktomi	Iktomi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	twisting	twist	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	breaking	break	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
8	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	necks	neck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **twist** | present · progressive | Iktomi | your heads |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 2 | **break** | gerund | Iktomi *not said here* | your necks |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer neck=Patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 88](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/88/)
- next →: [sentence 90](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/90/)
- ↑ back to [Iktomi and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/)