---
title: Brightly tinted feathers are handsome, but I wish they were light en… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Brightly tinted feathers are handsome, but I wish they were light enough to fly!” Who acts: tinted feathers, I, feathers. 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 35

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Brightly tinted feathers are handsome, but I wish they were light enough to fly!”

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**Who acts:** tinted feathers, I, feathers · **What happens:** tint, be, wish, fly · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (tinted feathers, I, feathers), 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:pg338:6:35
# text = Brightly tinted feathers are handsome, but I wish they were light enough to fly!”
1	Brightly	brightly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	tinted	tint	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	amod	_	_
3	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	handsome	handsome	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
12	light	light	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	_
13	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tint** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | brightly *property* | vn coloring-24 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | present | tinted feathers |  |  |  |  | handsome *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **wish** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 4 | **is** | past | feathers *= feather* |  |  |  |  | enough, light *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **fly** | to-infinitive | feathers *= feather* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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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