---
title: Like a dolphin the boat ran over the waves.” — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Like a dolphin the boat ran over the waves.” Who acts: boat. 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 76

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Like a dolphin the boat ran over the waves.”

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**Who acts:** boat · **What happens:** run · **To what, where:** waves

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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 (boat), 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:pg66357:18:76
# text = Like a dolphin the boat ran over the waves.”
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dolphin	dolphin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	ran	run	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	over	over	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	waves	wave	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **run** | past | the boat |  |  | the waves |  | like a dolphin | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over wave=Trajectory |

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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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