---
title: Maui’s home, at the best, was only a sorry affair. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: Maui’s home, at the best, was only a sorry affair. Who acts: home. 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 46

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Maui’s home, at the best, was only a sorry affair.

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**Who acts:** home · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** sorry affair

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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 (home), 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:pg66357:2:46
# text = Maui’s home, at the best, was only a sorry affair.
1	Maui	Maui	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’s	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
3	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	3	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	sorry	sorry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	affair	affair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Maui's home | a sorry affair |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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