---
title: They started to cross the big lake to get home. — Ojibwa myths and tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They started to cross the big lake to get home. Who acts: Indians. A sentence of «Ojibwa myths and tales» by Geo. E. Laidlaw, The Indian Boy Who Married a King’s Daughter., 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/pg76755/28/97/)

<!-- 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/) / [Ojibwa myths and tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg76755/) / [The Indian Boy Who Married a King’s Da…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg76755/28/) / 97

# Ojibwa myths and tales, The Indian Boy Who Married a King’s Daughter., sentence 97

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They started to cross the big lake to get home.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Indians · **What happens:** start, cross, get · **To what, where:** big lake

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Ojibwa myths and tales» by Geo. E. Laidlaw, The Indian Boy Who Married a King’s Daughter.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Indians), 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:pg76755:28:97
# text = They started to cross the big lake to get home.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	started	start	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	cross	cross	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	lake	lake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
10	home	home	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **start** | past | Indians *= indian* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **cross** | to-infinitive | Indians *= indian* *not said here* | the big lake |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lake=Patient |
| 3 | **get** | to-infinitive | Indians *= indian* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | home *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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:** «Ojibwa myths and tales» by Geo. E. Laidlaw, Project Gutenberg book 76755 (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 96](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg76755/28/96/)
- next →: [sentence 98](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg76755/28/98/)
- ↑ back to [The Indian Boy Who Married a King’s Daughter.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg76755/28/)