---
title: His was a savage face, large-featured, often ferocious and repulsive. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: His was a savage face, large-featured, often ferocious and repulsive. 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/pg66357/18/50/)

<!-- 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/) / 50

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 50

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
His was a savage face, large-featured, often ferocious and repulsive.

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** be, feature · **To what, where:** savage face

<!-- .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: 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:pg66357:18:50
# text = His was a savage face, large-featured, often ferocious and repulsive.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	savage	savage	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	featured	feature	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	often	often	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	ferocious	ferocious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	conj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	repulsive	repulsive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | friend's savage face |  |  |  | friend *nmod:poss* | tree rules |
| 2 | **feature** | participle · passive |  | friend's savage face |  |  |  |  | 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 49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/49/)
- next →: [sentence 51](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/51/)
- ↑ back to [The Law of the Splintered Paddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/)