---
title: The sea did not break over the boat, nor were they wet. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The sea did not break over the boat, nor were they wet. Who acts: sea, seas. 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/pg66357/18/75/)

<!-- 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/) / 75

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 75

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The sea did not break over the boat, nor were they wet.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sea, seas · **What happens:** not break, be · **To what, where:** boat

<!-- .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 (sea, seas), 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:pg66357:18:75
# text = The sea did not break over the boat, nor were they wet.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	over	over	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	13	cc	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	wet	wet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **break** | past · do-support | the sea |  |  | the boat |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over boat=Location |
| 2 | **is** | past | seas *= sea* |  |  |  |  | wet *property* | 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 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/74/)
- next →: [sentence 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/76/)
- ↑ back to [The Law of the Splintered Paddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/)