---
title: At once the drummers beat softly and slowly their drum while the cho… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: At once the drummers beat softly and slowly their drum while the chosen singers hummed together to find the common pitch. Who acts: drummers, chosen singers. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iya, the Camp-eater, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iya, the Camp-eater, sentence 51

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At once the drummers beat softly and slowly their drum while the chosen singers hummed together to find the common pitch.

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**Who acts:** drummers, chosen singers · **What happens:** beat, choose, hum, find · **To what, where:** drum, common pitch

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iya, the Camp-eater. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (drummers, chosen 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:pg338:13:51
# text = At once the drummers beat softly and slowly their drum while the chosen singers hummed together to find the common pitch.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	obl	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	drummers	drummer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	beat	beat	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	softly	softly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	6	conj	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	drum	drum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
11	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	chosen	choose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	amod	_	_
14	singers	singer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
15	hummed	hum	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
16	together	together	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	advcl	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	pitch	pitch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beat** | present | the drummers | drummers's drum |  |  |  | softly *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location drum=Theme |
| 2 | **choose** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **hum** | past | the chosen singers |  |  |  |  | together *property* | vn bulge-47.5.3 «NP V»: agent=Location |
| 4 | **find** | to-infinitive | the chosen singers *not said here* | the common pitch |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pitch=Topic |

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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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