Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 8

Then when their sharp ears hear any strange footfalls nigh they scamper away into the deep shadows of night.

Who acts: sharp ears, people · What happens: hear, scamper, shadow · To what, where: strange footfalls, deep shadows, night

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 (sharp ears, people), 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	Then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	6 hear	advmod
2	when	when	SCONJ	_	6 hear	mark
3	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 ears	nmod:poss
4	sharp	sharp	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 ears	amod
5	ears	ear	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 hear	nsubj
6	hear	hear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	9 footfalls	det
8	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 footfalls	amod
9	footfalls	footfall	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 hear	obj
10	nigh	nigh	ADV	_	12 scamper	advmod
11	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 scamper	nsubj
12	scamper	scamper	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 hear	obl
13	away	away	ADV	_	6 hear	advmod
14	into	into	ADP	_	17 shadows	case
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 shadows	det
16	deep	deep	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 shadows	amod
17	shadows	shadow	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 hear	obl
18	of	of	ADP	_	19 night	case
19	night	night	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 shadows	nmod
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 hear	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	hear	present	people's sharp ears	any strange footfalls	the deep shadows of night	then	away property	vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer footfall=Stimulus
2	scamper		people				nigh property	tree rules
3	shadow			night				nom shadow «state transitive»: of=patient

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/pg338/11/8/