---
title: A silvery thread among the stars, it soon drifted low beneath the ho… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: A silvery thread among the stars, it soon drifted low beneath the horizon. Who acts: silvery thread. 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 4

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A silvery thread among the stars, it soon drifted low beneath the horizon.

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**Who acts:** silvery thread · **What happens:** drift · **To what, where:** horizon

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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 (silvery thread), 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:pg338:11:4
# text = A silvery thread among the stars, it soon drifted low beneath the horizon.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	silvery	silvery	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	thread	thread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
4	among	among	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	stars	star	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	10	advmod	_	_
10	drifted	drift	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	low	low	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
12	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	horizon	horizon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drift** | past | a silvery thread among the stars |  |  | the horizon |  | low, soon *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme beneath horizon=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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