---
title: A light on the plain in the middle of the night was an unusual thing. — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: A light on the plain in the middle of the night was an unusual thing. Who acts: light. 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 22

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A light on the plain in the middle of the night was an unusual thing.

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**Who acts:** light · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** unusual thing

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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 (light), 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:pg338:11:22
# text = A light on the plain in the middle of the night was an unusual thing.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	plain	plain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	middle	middle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	unusual	unusual	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | a light on the plain in the middle of the night | a unusual thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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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