---
title: He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee. 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.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Coyote, sentence 45

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He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee.

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**Who acts:** Iktomi · **What happens:** gather, break · **To what, where:** dry willow sticks, sticks, two

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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 (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:pg338:5:45
# text = He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	gathered	gather	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	willow	willow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	sticks	stick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	broke	break	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	obl	_	_
11	against	against	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	knee	knee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **gather** | past | Iktomi | dry willow sticks |  |  |  |  | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=Theme |
| 2 | **break** | past | Iktomi *not said here* | sticks *= stick* |  | two |  | against Iktomi's knee | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Patient |

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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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