---
title: He held his ear close to the coyote's nose, but not a breath of air… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He held his ear close to the coyote's nose, but not a breath of air stirred from it. Who acts: Iktomi. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Coyote, 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/pg338/5/17/)

<!-- 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 Coyote](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/5/) / 17

# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Coyote, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He held his ear close to the coyote's nose, but not a breath of air stirred from it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Iktomi · **What happens:** hold, stir · **To what, where:** ear, air

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Coyote. 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:pg338:5:17
# text = He held his ear close to the coyote's nose, but not a breath of air stirred from it.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	held	hold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	ear	ear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	coyote	coyote	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	's	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
18	stirred	stir	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	acl	_	_
19	from	from	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past | Iktomi | Iktomi's ear |  |  |  | a breath of air *obl*; close *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ear=Theme |
| 2 | **stir** | participle |  | air *not said here* |  | air |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/5/16/)
- next →: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/5/18/)
- ↑ back to [Iktomi and the Coyote](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/5/)