Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology), Hiiaka and the Seacoast Kupuas, sentence 4
They were always ready to destroy and often devour any strangers passing near them.
Who acts: monsters, strangers · What happens: be, destroy, devour, pass · To what, where: strangers
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt, Hiiaka and the Seacoast Kupuas. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (monsters, strangers), 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 ready | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 ready | cop |
| 3 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 4 ready | advmod |
| 4 | ready | ready | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 destroy | mark |
| 6 | destroy | destroy | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 ready | xcomp |
| 7 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 9 devour | cc |
| 8 | often | often | ADV | _ | 9 devour | advmod |
| 9 | devour | devour | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 destroy | conj |
| 10 | any | any | DET | PronType=Ind | 11 strangers | det |
| 11 | strangers | stranger | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 devour | obj |
| 12 | passing | pass | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 11 strangers | acl |
| 13 | near | near | ADP | _ | 14 them | case |
| 14 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 passing | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 ready | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | monsters = monster | always, ready property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | destroy | to-infinitive | monsters = monster not said here | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | devour | infinitive | monsters = monster not said here | any strangers | often property | vn devour-39.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stranger=Patient | |||
| 4 | pass | gerund | any strangers not said here | near monsters = monster | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme near they=Location |
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 Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt, Project Gutenberg book 66516 (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/pg66516/19/4/