Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 106
The men turned back and struck at him with their paddles, but after a few blows the paddles were destroyed.
Who acts: men · What happens: turn back, strike, blow, destroy · To what, where: paddles
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Law of the Splintered Paddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men), 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 | 2 men | det |
| 2 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 turned | nsubj |
| 3 | turned | turn | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | back | back | ADV | _ | 3 turned | advmod |
| 5 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 6 struck | cc |
| 6 | struck | strike | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 turned | conj |
| 7 | at | at | ADP | _ | 8 him | case |
| 8 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 struck | obl |
| 9 | with | with | ADP | _ | 11 paddles | case |
| 10 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 paddles | nmod:poss |
| 11 | paddles | paddle | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 struck | obl |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 blows | punct |
| 13 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 17 blows | cc |
| 14 | after | after | ADP | _ | 16 few | case |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 few | det |
| 16 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 blows | amod |
| 17 | blows | blow | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 turned | parataxis |
| 18 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 19 paddles | det |
| 19 | paddles | paddle | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 destroyed | nsubj:pass |
| 20 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 destroyed | aux:pass |
| 21 | destroyed | destroy | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 17 blows | ccomp |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 turned | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | turn back | past | the men | vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | strike | past | the men not said here | at man; with feet's paddles | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V PP PP»: agent=Agent at he=Patient with paddle=Instrument | ||||
| 3 | blow | present | tree rules | ||||||
| 4 | destroy | past · passive | the paddles | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
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/pg66357/18/106/