---
title: She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea. Who acts: Pele. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Water of Life [1], with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Water of Life \[1\], sentence 170

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She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea.

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**Who acts:** Pele · **What happens:** put, sprinkle · **To what, where:** fingers, water, drops, sea

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Water of Life \[1\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pele), 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:pg66357:4:170
# text = She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	put	put	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	sprinkled	sprinkle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	drops	drop	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
11	over	over	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put** | past | Pele | Pele's fingers |  | the water |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent finger=Theme in water=Destination |
| 2 | **sprinkle** | past | Pele *not said here* | drops |  | the sea |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent drop=Theme over sea=Destination |

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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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