---
title: Like a shark the war canoe dashed toward the fishermen. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Like a shark the war canoe dashed toward the fishermen. 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/pg66357/18/88/)

<!-- 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/) / 88

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Law of the Splintered Paddle, sentence 88

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Like a shark the war canoe dashed toward the fishermen.

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** dash · **To what, where:** war canoe, fishermen

<!-- .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:pg66357:18:88
# text = Like a shark the war canoe dashed toward the fishermen.
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	shark	shark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	war	war	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	canoe	canoe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	dashed	dash	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl	_	_
8	toward	toward	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	fishermen	fisherman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dash** | participle |  | the war canoe like a shark *not said here* |  | the fishermen |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme toward fisherman=Trajectory |

<!-- .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 87](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/87/)
- next →: [sentence 89](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/89/)
- ↑ back to [The Law of the Splintered Paddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/18/)