---
title: Only the dry rib bones lay on the ground like giant fingers from an… — Old Indian Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Only the dry rib bones lay on the ground like giant fingers from an open grave. Who acts: dry rib bones. A sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi's Blanket, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Old Indian Legends, Iktomi's Blanket, sentence 67

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Only the dry rib bones lay on the ground like giant fingers from an open grave.

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**Who acts:** dry rib bones · **What happens:** lay · **To what, where:** ground

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This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Iktomi's Blanket. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dry rib bones), 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:pg338:3:67
# text = Only the dry rib bones lay on the ground like giant fingers from an open grave.
1	Only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	rib	rib	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	lay	lay	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	like	like	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	giant	giant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
13	from	from	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	grave	grave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lay** | present | the dry rib bones |  |  | the ground |  | like giant fingers; from a open grave | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP PP.material»: agent=Agent from grave=Material |

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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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