---
title: The drummers beat the time, turning their heads from side to side in… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The drummers beat the time, turning their heads from side to side in rhythm. Who acts: drummers. 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 31

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The drummers beat the time, turning their heads from side to side in rhythm.

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**Who acts:** drummers · **What happens:** beat, turn · **To what, where:** heads, side

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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 (drummers), 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:pg338:11:31
# text = The drummers beat the time, turning their heads from side to side in rhythm.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	drummers	drummer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	beat	beat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	turning	turn	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
10	from	from	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	rhythm	rhythm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beat** | past | the drummers |  |  |  | time |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **turn** | gerund | the drummers *not said here* | drummers's heads |  | side |  | to side in rhythm | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.agent V NP.theme PP.source PP.trajectory PP.destination»: agent=Agent head=Theme from side=Source to side=Trajectory |

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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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