---
title: Some carried their tails over their arms, while others trailed them… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Some carried their tails over their arms, while others trailed them proudly along. Who acts: Some, others. 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 33

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Some carried their tails over their arms, while others trailed them proudly along.

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**Who acts:** Some, others · **What happens:** carry, trail · **To what, where:** tails, arms

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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 (Some, others), 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:pg338:11:33
# text = Some carried their tails over their arms, while others trailed them proudly along.
1	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	2	nsubj	_	_
2	carried	carry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	tails	tail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	over	over	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	arms	arm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	others	other	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	trailed	trail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	proudly	proudly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
14	along	along	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	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 | **carry** | past | Some | feet's tails |  | feet's arms |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tail=Theme |
| 2 | **trail** | past | others | tails *= tail* |  |  |  | along, proudly *property* | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

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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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