---
title: Did you never see a birdie blink a blue wink? — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Did you never see a birdie blink a blue wink? Who acts: you, birdie. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Coyote, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Coyote, sentence 33

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Did you never see a birdie blink a blue wink?

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**Who acts:** you, birdie · **What happens:** not see, blink · **To what, where:** blue wink · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, birdie), 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:pg338:5:33
# text = Did you never see a birdie blink a blue wink?
1	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	see	see	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	birdie	birdie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	blink	blink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	wink	wink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | past · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **blink** | infinitive | a birdie | a blue wink |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent wink=Theme |

<!-- .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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