Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 19

They were laughing and talking among themselves while their chosen singers sang loud a merry tune.

Who acts: mice, chosen singers · What happens: laugh, talk, choose, sing · To what, where: merry tune

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 (mice, chosen singers), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 laughing	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 laughing	aux
3	laughing	laugh	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
4	and	and	CCONJ	_	5 talking	cc
5	talking	talk	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	3 laughing	conj
6	among	among	ADP	_	7 themselves	case
7	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	5 talking	obl
8	while	while	SCONJ	_	12 sang	mark
9	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 singers	nmod:poss
10	chosen	choose	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	11 singers	amod
11	singers	singer	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 sang	nsubj
12	sang	sing	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 talking	advcl
13	loud	loud	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 sang	xcomp
14	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	16 tune	det
15	merry	merry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 tune	amod
16	tune	tune	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 sang	obj
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 laughing	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	laugh	past · progressive	mice = mouse			vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	talk	gerund	mice = mouse not said here		among mice = mouse	vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	choose	participle				vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
4	sing speech: express	past	mice's chosen singers	a merry tune	loud property	vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location tune=Theme

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.

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