---
title: They saw a blue smoke rising, writhing upward till it vanished in th… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They saw a blue smoke rising, writhing upward till it vanished in the blue ether. Who acts: grass, blue smoke, smoke. 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 146

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They saw a blue smoke rising, writhing upward till it vanished in the blue ether.

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**Who acts:** grass, blue smoke, smoke · **What happens:** see, rise, writhe, vanish · **To what, where:** blue smoke, blue ether

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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 (grass, blue smoke, smoke), 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:pg338:6:146
# text = They saw a blue smoke rising, writhing upward till it vanished in the blue ether.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	smoke	smoke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	rising	rise	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	writhing	writhe	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	conj	_	_
9	upward	upward	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
10	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	vanished	vanish	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	ether	ether	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	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 | grass | a blue smoke |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer smoke=Stimulus |
| 2 | **rise** | gerund | a blue smoke *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **writhe** | gerund | a blue smoke *not said here* |  |  |  |  | upward *property* | vn body\_internal\_states-40.6 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **vanish** | past | smoke |  |  | the blue ether |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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