---
title: While he was gone a herd of deer came trotting by. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: While he was gone a herd of deer came trotting by. Who acts: herd. 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 83

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While he was gone a herd of deer came trotting by.

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**Who acts:** herd · **What happens:** go, come, trot · **To what, where:** magician

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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 (herd), 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:pg338:6:83
# text = While he was gone a herd of deer came trotting by.
1	While	while	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	gone	go	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	advcl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	herd	herd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	deer	deer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	trotting	trot	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	xcomp	_	_
11	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past · passive |  | magician |  |  |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | past | a herd of deer |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **trot** | gerund | a herd of deer *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «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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