---
title: He saw red dancing fire, and now he struck a bed of cracking embers. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He saw red dancing fire, and now he struck a bed of cracking embers. Who acts: paw. 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 53

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He saw red dancing fire, and now he struck a bed of cracking embers.

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**Who acts:** paw · **What happens:** see, strike · **To what, where:** red dancing fire, bed

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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 (paw), 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:pg338:5:53
# text = He saw red dancing fire, and now he struck a bed of cracking embers.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	struck	strike	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	cracking	cracking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	embers	ember	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | paw | red dancing fire |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer fire=Stimulus |
| 2 | **strike** | past | paw | a bed of cracking embers |  |  | now |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bed=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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