Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Water of Life [1], sentence 153
They would tightly cover up the water if a white hand came down.
Who acts: hands, white hand · What happens: cover up, come down · To what, where: water
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Water of Life [1]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hands, white hand), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 cover | nsubj |
| 2 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 4 cover | aux |
| 3 | tightly | tightly | ADV | _ | 4 cover | advmod |
| 4 | cover | cover | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 5 | up | up | ADP | _ | 4 cover | compound:prt |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 water | det |
| 7 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 cover | obj |
| 8 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 12 came | mark |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 hand | det |
| 10 | white | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 hand | amod |
| 11 | hand | hand | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 came | nsubj |
| 12 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 cover | advcl |
| 13 | down | down | ADV | _ | 12 came | advmod |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 cover | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | cover up | would | hands = hand | the water | tightly property | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme water=Destination | |||
| 2 | come down a condition, not said to happen | past | a white hand | down property | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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/pg66357/4/153/