---
title: Who was he? — Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury,… · tree and pragmatics
description: Who was he? A sentence of «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan, Rapaki: a Village By the Sea., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand, Rapaki: a Village By the Sea., sentence 79

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Who was he?

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**What happens:** be · **To what, where:** Hu

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This is a sentence of «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan, Rapaki: a Village By the Sea.. 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.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg73766:12:79
# text = Who was he?
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | Hu |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan, Project Gutenberg book 73766 (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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