---
title: Crying thus to himself, Iktomi stepped to the water's brink. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Crying thus to himself, Iktomi stepped to the water's brink. 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.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Muskrat, sentence 69

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Crying thus to himself, Iktomi stepped to the water's brink.

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**Who acts:** Iktomi · **What happens:** cry, step · **To what, where:** man, brink

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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 (Iktomi), 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:pg338:4:69
# text = Crying thus to himself, Iktomi stepped to the water's brink.
1	Crying	cry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
2	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
6	Iktomi	Iktomi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	stepped	step	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	brink	brink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | gerund | Iktomi *not said here* |  | man |  |  | thus *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to himself=Recipient |
| 2 | **step** | past | Iktomi |  |  | the water's brink |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme to brink=Destination |

<!-- .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.

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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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