---
title: They came on and on, just over the tops of the prairie grass. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They came on and on, just over the tops of the prairie grass. Who acts: balls. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 14

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They came on and on, just over the tops of the prairie grass.

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**Who acts:** balls · **What happens:** come · **To what, where:** tops

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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 (balls), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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 {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg338:11:14
# text = They came on and on, just over the tops of the prairie grass.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	on	on	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	on	on	ADV	RB	_	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	just	just	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
8	over	over	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	tops	top	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	prairie	prairie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | balls *= ball* |  |  | the tops of the prairie grass |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme over top=Initial\_Location |

<!-- .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.

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**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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