---
title: The Dakotas believe the sun is the father of life. — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: The Dakotas believe the sun is the father of life. Who acts: Dakotas, sun. 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/pg8122/21/67/)

<!-- 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/) / 67

# Legends of the Northwest, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4, sentence 67

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The Dakotas believe the sun is the father of life.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Dakotas, sun · **What happens:** believe, be · **To what, where:** father · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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, sun), 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:pg8122:21:67
# text = The Dakotas believe the sun is the father of life.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Dakotas	dakota	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	believe	believe	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **believe** | present | the Dakotas |  |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **is a** | present | the sun | the father |  |  |  | of life | 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:** «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 66](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/66/)
- next →: [sentence 68](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/68/)
- ↑ back to [In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8122/21/)