---
title: But the Maui army had the advantage of a well chosen position. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Maui army had the advantage of a well chosen position. Who acts: Maui army, well. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Alapa Regiment, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/14/223/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Hawaiian Historical Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/) / [The Alapa Regiment](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/14/) / 223

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Alapa Regiment, sentence 223

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But the Maui army had the advantage of a well chosen position.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Maui army, well · **What happens:** have, choose · **To what, where:** advantage, position

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Alapa Regiment. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Maui army, well), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66357:14:223
# text = But the Maui army had the advantage of a well chosen position.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	Maui	Maui	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	army	army	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	advantage	advantage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	well	well	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	chosen	choose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	acl	_	_
12	position	position	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the Maui army | the advantage of a well |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent advantage=Patient |
| 2 | **choose** | participle | a well *not said here* | position |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent position=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 222](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/14/222/)
- next →: [sentence 224](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/14/224/)
- ↑ back to [The Alapa Regiment](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/14/)