---
title: In a few minutes they surrounded the boat. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: In a few minutes they surrounded the boat. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Sons of Kii, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/7/17/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Hawaiian Historical Legends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/) / [The Sons of Kii](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/7/) / 17

# Hawaiian Historical Legends, The Sons of Kii, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In a few minutes they surrounded the boat.

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** surround · **To what, where:** slaves

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, The Sons of Kii. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66357:7:17
# text = In a few minutes they surrounded the boat.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	minutes	minute	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	surrounded	surround	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **surround** | participle · passive |  | slaves *= slave* |  |  | minute | the boat *obj* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/7/16/)
- next →: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/7/18/)
- ↑ back to [The Sons of Kii](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66357/7/)