---
title: They heaved against the bending mass and it receded rapidly. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They heaved against the bending mass and it receded rapidly. Who acts: Islanders, mass. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Maui the Polynesian, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, Maui the Polynesian, sentence 41

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They heaved against the bending mass and it receded rapidly.

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**Who acts:** Islanders, mass · **What happens:** heave, recede

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Maui the Polynesian. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Islanders, mass), 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:pg66357:2:41
# text = They heaved against the bending mass and it receded rapidly.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	heaved	heave	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	against	against	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	bending	bending	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	mass	mass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	receded	recede	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	rapidly	rapidly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **heave** | past | Islanders *= islander* |  |  |  |  | against the bending mass | vn push-12 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **recede** | past | mass |  |  |  |  | rapidly *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «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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