---
title: His name was William Richards. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: His name was William Richards. Who acts: name, man. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The First Constitution, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The First Constitution, sentence 20

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His name was William Richards.

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**Who acts:** name, man · **What happens:** be, name · **To what, where:** William

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The First Constitution. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (name, man), 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:pg66357:21:20
# text = His name was William Richards.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	William	William	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	Richards	Richards	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | man's name | William |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **name** |  | man |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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