---
title: This is how it first became a saying among the plains people. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: This is how it first became a saying among the plains people. Who acts: This, 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 34

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
This is how it first became a saying among the plains people.

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**Who acts:** This, birdie · **What happens:** be, become · **To what, where:** saying

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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 (This, 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:pg338:5:34
# text = This is how it first became a saying among the plains people.
1	This	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	6	advmod	_	_
6	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	saying	saying	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	xcomp	_	_
9	among	among	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	plains	plain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	compound	_	_
12	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | This |  |  |  |  | how *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **become** | past | birdie | a saying |  |  |  | among plains people; first *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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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