---
title: Life was too precious to be risked in that brother’s presence. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Life was too precious to be risked in that brother’s presence. Who acts: Life. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Alapa Regiment, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Alapa Regiment, sentence 242

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Life was too precious to be risked in that brother’s presence.

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**Who acts:** Life · **What happens:** be, risk · **To what, where:** presence

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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 (Life), 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:pg66357:14:242
# text = Life was too precious to be risked in that brother’s presence.
1	Life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	too	too	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	precious	precious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	risked	risk	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	advcl	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
9	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	det	_	_
10	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’s	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	presence	presence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Life |  |  |  |  | precious *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **risk** | to-infinitive · passive | Life *not said here* |  |  | that brother's presence |  |  | vn risk-94-1 «NP V S\_ING» |

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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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