---
title: The Dakotas had no Wakan Tanka--or Wakan-péta--fire spirit--till whi… — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: The Dakotas had no Wakan Tanka--or Wakan-péta--fire spirit--till whitemen imported them. Who acts: Dakotas, whitemen. A sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4, 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/pg8122/21/141/)

<!-- 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/) / [Legends of the Northwest](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/) / [In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/) / 141

# Legends of the Northwest, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4, sentence 141

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The Dakotas had no Wakan Tanka--or Wakan-péta--fire spirit--till whitemen imported them.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Dakotas, whitemen · **What happens:** have, import · **To what, where:** Wakan Tanka, Dakotas

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dakotas, whitemen), 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:pg8122:21:141
# text = The Dakotas had no Wakan Tanka--or Wakan-péta--fire spirit--till whitemen imported them.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Dakotas	dakota	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	6	det	_	_
5	Wakan	Wakan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	Tanka	Tanka	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	Wakan	Wakan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	péta	péta	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	spirit	spirit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	whitemen	whitemen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
18	imported	import	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
19	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the Dakotas | no Wakan Tanka |  |  |  | Wakan péta *obj* | tree rules |
| 2 | **import** | past | whitemen | Dakotas *= dakota* |  |  |  |  | vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 140](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/140/)
- next →: [sentence 142](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/142/)
- ↑ back to [In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/)