---
title: They studied the spear and surf-board exercises. — Hawaiian Historical Legends · tree and pragmatics
description: They studied the spear and surf-board exercises. Who acts: boys. A sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Moi-keha, the Restless, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Historical Legends, Moi-keha, the Restless, sentence 8

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They studied the spear and surf-board exercises.

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**Who acts:** boys · **What happens:** study · **To what, where:** spear

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Historical Legends» by W. D. Westervelt, Moi-keha, the Restless. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys), 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:pg66357:9:8
# text = They studied the spear and surf-board exercises.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	studied	study	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	spear	spear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
6	surf	surf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	board	board	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	exercises	exercise	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **study** | past | boys *= boy* | the spear and board exercises |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spear=Topic |

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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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