---
title: The brothers broke into small dust and were destroyed. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: The brothers broke into small dust and were destroyed. Who acts: brothers. 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 31

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The brothers broke into small dust and were destroyed.

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** break, destroy · **To what, where:** small dust

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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 (brothers), 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:pg66357:4:31
# text = The brothers broke into small dust and were destroyed.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	broke	break	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	into	into	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	dust	dust	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux:pass	_	_
9	destroyed	destroy	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **break** | past | the brothers |  |  |  |  | into small dust *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Patient into dust=Result |
| 2 | **destroy** | past · passive | the brothers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP» |

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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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