---
title: They could both trace their high chief blood through more than a tho… — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They could both trace their high chief blood through more than a thousand years of royal ancestors. Who acts: watchmen. 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.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 19

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They could both trace their high chief blood through more than a thousand years of royal ancestors.

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**Who acts:** watchmen · **What happens:** trace · **To what, where:** high chief blood

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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 (watchmen), 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:pg66357:18:19
# text = They could both trace their high chief blood through more than a thousand years of royal ancestors.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	both	both	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	trace	trace	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
6	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	chief	chief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	blood	blood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
9	through	through	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
10	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp|ExtPos=ADV	13	advmod	_	_
11	than	than	ADP	IN	_	10	fixed	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	royal	royal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	ancestors	ancestor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **trace** | could | watchmen *= watchman* | watchmen's high chief blood |  |  | year | both *property* | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blood=Theme |

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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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