---
title: They were Indians. — Wigwam stories told by North American Indians · tree and pragmatics
description: They were Indians. Who acts: people. A sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, VII. Story of the First Man and Woman, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/32/23/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Wigwam stories told by North American…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/) / [VII. Story of the First Man and Woman](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/32/) / 23

# Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, VII. Story of the First Man and Woman, sentence 23

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were Indians.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** Indians

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, VII. Story of the First Man and Woman. 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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg73136:32:23
# text = They were Indians.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	Indians	Indian	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | people | Indians |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, Project Gutenberg book 73136 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/32/22/)
- next →: [sentence 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/32/24/)
- ↑ back to [VII. Story of the First Man and Woman](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/32/)