---
title: Picking the food like a bird. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Picking the food like a bird. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, First Foreigners, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, First Foreigners, sentence 95

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Picking the food like a bird.

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**What happens:** pick · **To what, where:** food

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, First Foreigners. 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.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66357:11:95
# text = Picking the food like a bird.
1	Picking	pick	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pick** | gerund |  | the food |  |  |  | like a bird | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=Patient |

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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.

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**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.

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