---
title: “We have to hold the steering paddles more firmly.” — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: “We have to hold the steering paddles more firmly.” Who acts: We. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Paao From Samoa, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, Paao From Samoa, sentence 88

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“We have to hold the steering paddles more firmly.”

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** have, hold, paddle · **To what, where:** steering · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Paao From Samoa. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg66357:8:88
# text = “We have to hold the steering paddles more firmly.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	steering	steering	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	paddles	paddle	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	10	advmod	_	_
10	firmly	firmly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | present | We |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hold** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* | the steering |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent steering=Theme |
| 3 | **paddle** *in a quote* | present |  |  |  |  |  | firmly *property* | 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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