Hawaiian Historical Legends, Paao From Samoa, sentence 159
The high chiefs of “the good old days of Hawaii” had certain prerogatives which were never questioned.
Who acts: high chiefs · What happens: have, not question · To what, where: certain prerogatives
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Paao From Samoa. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (high chiefs), 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 chiefs | det |
| 2 | high | high | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 chiefs | amod |
| 3 | chiefs | chief | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 had | nsubj |
| 4 | of | of | ADP | _ | 9 days | case |
| 5 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 days | punct |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 days | det |
| 7 | good | good | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 days | amod |
| 8 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 days | amod |
| 9 | days | day | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 had | obl |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 Hawaii | case |
| 11 | Hawaii | Hawaii | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 had | nsubj |
| 12 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 Hawaii | punct |
| 13 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 14 | certain | certain | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 prerogatives | amod |
| 15 | prerogatives | prerogative | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 had | obj |
| 16 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 19 questioned | nsubj:pass |
| 17 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 19 questioned | aux:pass |
| 18 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 19 questioned | advmod |
| 19 | questioned | question | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 15 prerogatives | acl:relcl |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 had | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | have | past | the high chiefs | certain prerogatives | day | Hawaii nsubj | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent prerogative=Patient | ||
| 2 | not question speech: other | past · passive | certain prerogatives | vn interrogate-37.1.3 «NP V NP»: subject=Recipient |
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/pg66357/8/159/