---
title: They speak the Dakota tongue, and originally were a band of that nat… — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: They speak the Dakota tongue, and originally were a band of that nation. Who acts: roasters. A sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the Northwest, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 3, sentence 59

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They speak the Dakota tongue, and originally were a band of that nation.

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**Who acts:** roasters · **What happens:** speak, be · **To what, where:** Dakota tongue, band · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (roasters), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg8122:20:59
# text = They speak the Dakota tongue, and originally were a band of that nation.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	Dakota	Dakota	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	originally	originally	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	band	band	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	det	_	_
14	nation	nation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | roasters *= roaster* | the Dakota tongue |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | a band |  |  |  | of that nation; originally *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, Project Gutenberg book 8122 (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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