---
title: They built a small open fire within the center of their queer dance… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They built a small open fire within the center of their queer dance house. Who acts: singers. 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 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They built a small open fire within the center of their queer dance house.

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**Who acts:** singers · **What happens:** build · **To what, where:** small open fire

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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 (singers), 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:pg338:11:20
# text = They built a small open fire within the center of their queer dance house.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	built	build	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
7	within	within	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	center	center	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
12	queer	queer	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	dance	dance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **build** | past | singers *= singer* | a small open fire |  |  |  | within the center of singers's queer dance house | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset fire=Product |

<!-- .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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