---
title: No sooner had the baby badgers caught their breath than they howled… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: No sooner had the baby badgers caught their breath than they howled and shrieked with pain and fright. Who acts: baby badgers, badgers. 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 81

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No sooner had the baby badgers caught their breath than they howled and shrieked with pain and fright.

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**Who acts:** baby badgers, badgers · **What happens:** have, catch, howl, shriek · **To what, where:** breath

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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 (baby badgers, badgers), 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:pg338:7:81
# text = No sooner had the baby badgers caught their breath than they howled and shrieked with pain and fright.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	sooner	soon	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	3	advmod	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	baby	baby	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	badgers	badger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	howled	howl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	shrieked	shriek	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	conj	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	pain	pain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	fright	fright	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past |  |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **catch** | past | the baby badgers | badgers's breath |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent breath=Theme |
| 3 | **howl** | past | badgers *= badger* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **shriek** | past | badgers *= badger* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with pain and fright | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with pain=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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