---
title: By combining forces it seemed easy to overthrow the high chief of Ha… — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: By combining forces it seemed easy to overthrow the high chief of Hawaii. Who acts: it. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Red Mouth Gun, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Red Mouth Gun, sentence 16

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By combining forces it seemed easy to overthrow the high chief of Hawaii.

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**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** combine, seem, overthrow · **To what, where:** high chief

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Red Mouth Gun. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it), 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:pg66357:17:16
# text = By combining forces it seemed easy to overthrow the high chief of Hawaii.
1	By	by	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	combining	combine	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	amod	_	_
3	forces	force	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	overthrow	overthrow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	chief	chief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	Hawaii	Hawaii	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **combine** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn mix-22.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **seem** | past | it |  |  |  |  | by combining forces; easy *property* | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **overthrow** | to-infinitive |  | the high chief of Hawaii |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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