Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 16
Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the heart of the level land.
Who acts: terrible eyes · What happens: draw
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (terrible eyes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slowly | slowly | ADV | _ | 7 drew | advmod |
| 2 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 7 drew | cc |
| 3 | surely | surely | ADV | _ | 7 drew | advmod |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 eyes | det |
| 5 | terrible | terrible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 eyes | amod |
| 6 | eyes | eye | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 drew | nsubj |
| 7 | drew | draw | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | nearer | near | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 7 drew | xcomp |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 nearer | cc |
| 10 | nearer | near | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 8 nearer | conj |
| 11 | to | to | ADP | _ | 13 heart | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 heart | det |
| 13 | heart | heart | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 nearer | obl |
| 14 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 land | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 land | det |
| 16 | level | level | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 land | amod |
| 17 | land | land | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 heart | nmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 drew | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | draw | past | the terrible eyes | near, slowly, surely property | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
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.
Text: «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Project Gutenberg book 338 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/16/