---
title: While she told the story the chieftain listened with downcast face. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: While she told the story the chieftain listened with downcast face. Who acts: woman, chieftain. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Shooting of the Red Eagle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Shooting of the Red Eagle, sentence 37

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While she told the story the chieftain listened with downcast face.

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**Who acts:** woman, chieftain · **What happens:** tell, listen · **To what, where:** story · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Shooting of the Red Eagle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woman, chieftain), 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:pg338:9:37
# text = While she told the story the chieftain listened with downcast face.
1	While	while	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	chieftain	chieftain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	downcast	downcast	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | woman | the story |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |
| 2 | **listen** | past | the chieftain |  |  |  |  | with downcast face | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |

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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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