---
title: White beavers are very rare, very cunning and hard to catch. — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: White beavers are very rare, very cunning and hard to catch. Who acts: White beavers. A sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, The Legend., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the Northwest, The Legend., sentence 10

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White beavers are very rare, very cunning and hard to catch.

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**Who acts:** White beavers · **What happens:** be, catch

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, The Legend.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (White beavers), 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:pg8122:17:10
# text = White beavers are very rare, very cunning and hard to catch.
1	White	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	beavers	beaver	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	rare	rare	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	cunning	cunning	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | White beavers |  |  |  |  | rare *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | White beavers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | White beavers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **catch** | to-infinitive | White beavers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, Project Gutenberg book 8122 (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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