Hawaiian Historical Legends, First Foreigners, sentence 8
The spice islands lay somewhere in a great ocean toward the sunset from Spain, provided the world was round, as Columbus argued.
Who acts: spice islands, world, Columbus · What happens: lay, provide, be, argue · To what, where: great ocean
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, First Foreigners. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spice islands, world, Columbus), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 islands | det |
| 2 | spice | spice | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 islands | compound |
| 3 | islands | island | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 lay | nsubj |
| 4 | lay | lay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | somewhere | somewhere | ADV | PronType=Ind | 4 lay | advmod |
| 6 | in | in | ADP | _ | 9 ocean | case |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 ocean | det |
| 8 | great | great | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 ocean | amod |
| 9 | ocean | ocean | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 lay | obl |
| 10 | toward | toward | ADP | _ | 12 sunset | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 sunset | det |
| 12 | sunset | sunset | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 ocean | nmod |
| 13 | from | from | ADP | _ | 14 Spain | case |
| 14 | Spain | Spain | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 sunset | nmod |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 provided | punct |
| 16 | provided | provide | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 lay | parataxis |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 world | det |
| 18 | world | world | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 round | nsubj |
| 19 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 20 round | cop |
| 20 | round | round | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 provided | ccomp |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 24 argued | punct |
| 22 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 24 argued | mark |
| 23 | Columbus | Columbus | PROPN | Number=Sing | 24 argued | nsubj |
| 24 | argued | argue | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 provided | conj |
| 25 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 lay | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lay | present | the spice islands | a great ocean toward the sunset from Spain | somewhere property | vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent in ocean=Destination | |||
| 2 | provide | past | vn ensure-99 «NP V that S»: agent=Precondition | ||||||
| 3 | is | past | the world | round property | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | argue speech: disagree | past | Columbus | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
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.
Text: «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Project Gutenberg book 66357 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/11/8/