---
title: He stood watching the big bear cutting thin slices of meat. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He stood watching the big bear cutting thin slices of meat. Who acts: father, big bear. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Badger and the Bear, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, The Badger and the Bear, sentence 125

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He stood watching the big bear cutting thin slices of meat.

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**Who acts:** father, big bear · **What happens:** stand, watch, cut, slice · **To what, where:** big bear, thin slices, meat

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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 (father, big bear), 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:pg338:7:125
# text = He stood watching the big bear cutting thin slices of meat.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	watching	watch	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	xcomp	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	bear	bear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	cutting	cut	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	acl	_	_
8	thin	thin	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	slices	slice	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	meat	meat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | father |  |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **watch** | gerund | father *not said here* | the big bear |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bear=Theme |
| 3 | **cut** | gerund | the big bear *not said here* | thin slices of meat |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset slice=Product |
| 4 | **slice** |  |  | meat |  |  |  |  | nom slice «possession transitive»: of=patient |

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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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