Hawaiian Historical Legends, Captain Cook, sentence 78
The Oahu people asked him, “What kind of a thing was the ship?”
Who acts: Oahu people, thing · What happens: ask, be · To what, where: Kauai · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Captain Cook. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Oahu people, thing), 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 people | det |
| 2 | Oahu | Oahu | PROPN | Number=Sing | 3 people | compound |
| 3 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 asked | nsubj |
| 4 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 asked | iobj |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 kind | punct |
| 7 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 kind | punct |
| 8 | What | what | DET | PronType=Int | 9 kind | det |
| 9 | kind | kind | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 asked | ccomp |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 15 ship | case |
| 11 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 thing | det |
| 12 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 ship | nsubj |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 15 ship | cop |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 ship | det |
| 15 | ship | ship | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 kind | nmod |
| 16 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 9 kind | punct |
| 17 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 kind | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask | past | the Oahu people | Kauai | what kind ccomp | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient | |||
| 2 | is in a quote | past | a thing | of the ship | tree rules |
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.
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