---
title: There was a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailu… — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailua, Hawaii. Who acts: modest grass house. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Last of the Tabu, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, Last of the Tabu, sentence 8

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There was a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailua, Hawaii.

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**Who acts:** modest grass house · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Last of the Tabu. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (modest grass house), 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:pg66357:19:8
# text = There was a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailua, Hawaii.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	modest	modest	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nmod	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	upland	upland	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	valleys	valley	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	Kailua	Kailua	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	Hawaii	Hawaii	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailua |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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