---
title: The lava found it difficult to overwhelm him. — Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology) · tree and pragmatics
description: The lava found it difficult to overwhelm him. Who acts: lava. A sentence of «Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt, Pili and Noho, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology), Pili and Noho, sentence 229

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The lava found it difficult to overwhelm him.

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**Who acts:** lava · **What happens:** find, overwhelm · **To what, where:** power, lava · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt, Pili and Noho. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lava), 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:pg66516:20:229
# text = The lava found it difficult to overwhelm him.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	lava	lava	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	difficult	difficult	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	overwhelm	overwhelm	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	csubj	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | past | the lava | power |  |  |  | difficult *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
| 2 | **overwhelm** | to-infinitive |  | lava |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus he=Experiencer |

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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 Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt, Project Gutenberg book 66516 (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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