---
title: The muskrat helped to lift the heavy stone upon Iktomi's back. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The muskrat helped to lift the heavy stone upon Iktomi's back. Who acts: muskrat. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Muskrat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Muskrat, sentence 44

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The muskrat helped to lift the heavy stone upon Iktomi's back.

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**Who acts:** muskrat · **What happens:** help, lift · **To what, where:** heavy stone, back

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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 (muskrat), 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:pg338:4:44
# text = The muskrat helped to lift the heavy stone upon Iktomi's back.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	muskrat	muskrat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	helped	help	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	lift	lift	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	Iktomi	Iktomi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **help** | past | the muskrat |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **lift** | to-infinitive | the muskrat *not said here* | the heavy stone |  | Iktomi's back |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent stone=Theme upon back=Destination |

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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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