---
title: The beaver and otter forfeited their lives. — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: The beaver and otter forfeited their lives. Who acts: beaver. A sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the Northwest, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4, sentence 49

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The beaver and otter forfeited their lives.

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**Who acts:** beaver · **What happens:** forfeit · **To what, where:** lives

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, In the Measure of Hiawatha, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (beaver), 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:pg8122:21:49
# text = The beaver and otter forfeited their lives.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	beaver	beaver	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	otter	otter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
5	forfeited	forfeit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **forfeit** | past | the beaver and otter | beaver's lives |  |  |  |  | vn contribute-13.2-1-1 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent life=Theme |

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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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