---
title: The flock of chattering birds flew by with whirring wings. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The flock of chattering birds flew by with whirring wings. Who acts: flock. 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 49

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The flock of chattering birds flew by with whirring wings.

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**Who acts:** flock · **What happens:** chatter, fly, whir

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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 (flock), 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:pg338:6:49
# text = The flock of chattering birds flew by with whirring wings.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	flock	flock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	chattering	chatter	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	amod	_	_
5	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
6	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	whirring	whir	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	amod	_	_
10	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **chatter** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **fly** | past | the flock of chattering birds |  |  |  |  | by whirring wings | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme by wing=Location |
| 3 | **whir** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «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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