---
title: Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he had ready to kindle. Who acts: Iktomi, wood pile. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi's Blanket, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi's Blanket, sentence 33

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Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he had ready to kindle.

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**Who acts:** Iktomi, wood pile · **What happens:** sharpen, plant, have, kindle · **To what, where:** willow sticks, sticks, wood pile

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi's Blanket. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Iktomi, wood pile), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg338:173`): 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:pg338:3:33
# text = Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he had ready to kindle.
1	Sharpening	sharpen	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
2	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	4	det	_	_
3	willow	willow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	sticks	stick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	planted	plant	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	around	around	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	_
13	pile	pile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
16	ready	ready	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	xcomp	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	kindle	kindle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sharpen** | gerund | Iktomi *not said here* | some willow sticks |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent stick=Patient |
| 2 | **plant** | past | Iktomi | sticks *= stick* |  | a wood pile |  |  | vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent they=Theme around pile=Destination |
| 3 | **have** | past | Iktomi | a wood pile *not said here* |  |  |  | ready *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pile=Patient |
| 4 | **kindle** | to-infinitive | a wood pile *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

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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:** 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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