---
title: The morning light was touching the inland mountain tops. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The morning light was touching the inland mountain tops. Who acts: morning light. 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 80

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The morning light was touching the inland mountain tops.

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**Who acts:** morning light · **What happens:** touch · **To what, where:** inland mountain tops

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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 (morning light), 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:pg66357:18:80
# text = The morning light was touching the inland mountain tops.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	touching	touch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	inland	inland	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	mountain	mountain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	tops	top	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | past · progressive | the morning light | the inland mountain tops |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme top=Co-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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