---
title: Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the he… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the heart of the level land. Who acts: terrible eyes. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, 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/pg338/11/16/)

<!-- 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/) / [Old Indian Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/) / [Dance in a Buffalo Skull](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/) / 16

# Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the heart of the level land.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** terrible eyes · **What happens:** draw

<!-- .vabout -->
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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg338:11:16
# text = Slowly but surely the terrible eyes drew nearer and nearer to the heart of the level land.
1	Slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
2	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	terrible	terrible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	drew	draw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	nearer	near	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	xcomp	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	nearer	near	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	8	conj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	level	level	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | 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 |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/15/)
- next →: [sentence 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/17/)
- ↑ back to [Dance in a Buffalo Skull](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/11/)