---
title: Their war canoes are not among the shadows on the water. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Their war canoes are not among the shadows on the water. Who acts: war canoes. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, 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/pg66357/18/15/)

<!-- 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 Law of the Splintered Paddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/) / 15

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Their war canoes are not among the shadows on the water.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** war canoes · **What happens:** not be · **To what, where:** water

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Law of the Splintered Paddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (war canoes), 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:pg66357:18:15
# text = Their war canoes are not among the shadows on the water.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
2	war	war	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	canoes	canoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
6	among	among	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	shadows	shadow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | present | points's war canoes |  |  | the water |  | among the shadows | tree rules |

<!-- .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 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/14/)
- next →: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/16/)
- ↑ back to [The Law of the Splintered Paddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/)