---
title: He watched the wily Iktomi concocting a plot. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He watched the wily Iktomi concocting a plot. Who acts: Iktomi. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Muskrat, 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/pg338/4/35/)

<!-- 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 Muskrat](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/4/) / 35

# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Muskrat, sentence 35

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He watched the wily Iktomi concocting a plot.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Iktomi · **What happens:** watch, concoct · **To what, where:** wily Iktomi, plot

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Muskrat. 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:pg338:4:35
# text = He watched the wily Iktomi concocting a plot.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	watched	watch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	wily	wily	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	Iktomi	Iktomi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	concocting	concoct	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	plot	plot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **watch** | past | Iktomi | the wily Iktomi |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent iktomi=Theme |
| 2 | **concoct** | gerund | Iktomi *not said here* | a plot |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent plot=Result |

<!-- .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 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/4/34/)
- next →: [sentence 36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/4/36/)
- ↑ back to [Iktomi and the Muskrat](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/4/)