---
title: He could not help being himself. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He could not help being himself. Who acts: thin. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Badger and the Bear, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/7/108/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Old Indian Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/) / [The Badger and the Bear](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/7/) / 108

# Old Indian Legends, The Badger and the Bear, sentence 108

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He could not help being himself.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** thin · **What happens:** not help, be · **To what, where:** thin

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Badger and the Bear. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thin), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg338:7:108
# text = He could not help being himself.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	cop	_	_
6	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **help** | could | thin |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | gerund |  | thin |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 107](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/7/107/)
- next →: [sentence 109](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/7/109/)
- ↑ back to [The Badger and the Bear](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/7/)