---
title: Covering their heads with their blankets, they sat trembling with fe… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Covering their heads with their blankets, they sat trembling with fear. Who acts: people. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Tree-bound, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, The Tree-bound, sentence 15

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Covering their heads with their blankets, they sat trembling with fear.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** cover, sit, tremble · **To what, where:** heads

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, The Tree-bound. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg338:8:15
# text = Covering their heads with their blankets, they sat trembling with fear.
1	Covering	cover	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
2	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	blankets	blanket	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	trembling	tremble	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	xcomp	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cover** | gerund | people *not said here* | people's heads |  |  |  | with people's blankets | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent head=Destination with blanket=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | past | people |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tremble** | gerund | people *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with fear | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «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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