Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 127
However, it was impossible to keep the boatmen from telling the story of the splintered paddle and the wounded steersman.
What happens: be, keep, tell, splinter · To what, where: boatmen, story · Speech: someone speaks here
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: 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 | However | however | ADV | _ | 5 impossible | advmod |
| 2 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 1 However | punct |
| 3 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 impossible | expl |
| 4 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 impossible | cop |
| 5 | impossible | impossible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 6 | to | to | PART | _ | 7 keep | mark |
| 7 | keep | keep | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 impossible | csubj |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 boatmen | det |
| 9 | boatmen | boatman | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 keep | obj |
| 10 | from | from | SCONJ | _ | 11 telling | mark |
| 11 | telling | tell | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 7 keep | advcl |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 story | det |
| 13 | story | story | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 telling | obj |
| 14 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 paddle | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 paddle | det |
| 16 | splintered | splinter | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 17 paddle | amod |
| 17 | paddle | paddle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 story | nmod |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 steersman | cc |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 steersman | det |
| 20 | wounded | wounded | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 steersman | amod |
| 21 | steersman | steersman | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 paddle | conj |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 impossible | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | however, impossible property | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | keep | to-infinitive | the boatmen | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boatman=Theme | |||||
| 3 | tell speech: assert | gerund | the story of the splintered paddle and the wounded steersman | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient | |||||
| 4 | splinter | participle | vn break-45.1 «NP.patient V»: agent=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/pg66357/18/127/