---
title: He could step over mountains and think they were only ant-hills. — Wigwam stories told by North American Indians · tree and pragmatics
description: He could step over mountains and think they were only ant-hills. Who acts: tribe, steps. A sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, I. Menabozho and His Three Brothers, 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/pg73136/70/30/)

<!-- 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/) / [I. Menabozho and His Three Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/70/) / 30

# Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, I. Menabozho and His Three Brothers, sentence 30

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He could step over mountains and think they were only ant-hills.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** tribe, steps · **What happens:** step, think, be · **To what, where:** mountains, ant hills · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, I. Menabozho and His Three Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tribe, steps), 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:pg73136:70:30
# text = He could step over mountains and think they were only ant-hills.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	step	step	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	over	over	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	mountains	mountain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	ant	ant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	hills	hill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **step** | could | tribe |  |  | mountains |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over mountain=Trajectory |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | present | tribe *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | steps *= step* | ant hills |  |  |  |  | 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 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/70/29/)
- next →: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/70/31/)
- ↑ back to [I. Menabozho and His Three Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73136/70/)