---
title: He was waiting for the chieftain's men to spy him. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: He was waiting for the chieftain's men to spy him. Who acts: face. 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 5

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He was waiting for the chieftain's men to spy him.

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**Who acts:** face · **What happens:** wait, spy · **To what, where:** face

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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 (face), 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:pg338:9:5
# text = He was waiting for the chieftain's men to spy him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	waiting	wait	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	chieftain	chieftain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	spy	spy	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	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 | **wait** | past · progressive | face |  |  |  |  | for the chieftain's men | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **spy** | to-infinitive | face *not said here* | face |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer he=Stimulus |

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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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