---
title: I can dig the ground and fill it with dry grass and sticks. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: I can dig the ground and fill it with dry grass and sticks. Who acts: I, dry grass. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Fawn, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Fawn, sentence 133

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
I can dig the ground and fill it with dry grass and sticks.

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**Who acts:** I, dry grass · **What happens:** dig, fill, stick · **To what, where:** ground

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Fawn. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, dry grass), 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:pg338:6:133
# text = I can dig the ground and fill it with dry grass and sticks.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	dig	dig	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	fill	fill	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	sticks	stick	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dig** | can | I | the ground |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent ground=Theme |
| 2 | **fill** | present | I *not said here* | ground |  |  |  | with dry grass | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent it=Patient with grass=Instrument |
| 3 | **stick** | present | dry grass *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: 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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