---
title: They sang in unison a merry dance-song, and beat a lively tattoo on… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They sang in unison a merry dance-song, and beat a lively tattoo on the drum. Who acts: eyes. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Ducks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/35/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Old Indian Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/) / [Iktomi and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/) / 35

# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi and the Ducks, sentence 35

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They sang in unison a merry dance-song, and beat a lively tattoo on the drum.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** eyes · **What happens:** sing, beat · **To what, where:** merry dance song, unison, lively tattoo

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi and the Ducks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg338:2:35
# text = They sang in unison a merry dance-song, and beat a lively tattoo on the drum.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	unison	unison	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
6	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
7	dance	dance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	song	song	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	lively	lively	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	tattoo	tattoo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	drum	drum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | eyes *= eye* | a merry dance song |  | unison |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location song=Theme |
| 2 | **beat** | infinitive | eyes *= eye* *not said here* | a lively tattoo |  |  |  | on the drum | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent tattoo=Instrument on drum=Patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/34/)
- next →: [sentence 36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/36/)
- ↑ back to [Iktomi and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg338/2/)