---
title: Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird." — Legends of the Northwest · tree and pragmatics
description: Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird." Who acts: widowed bird. A sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, The Feast of the Virgins., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the Northwest, The Feast of the Virgins., part 1, sentence 47

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Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird."

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**Who acts:** widowed bird · **What happens:** widow, wail

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the Northwest» by Hanford Lennox Gordon, The Feast of the Virgins., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (widowed bird), 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:pg8122:8:47
# text = Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird."
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	mournful	mournful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	wail	wail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	widowed	widow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	amod	_	_
8	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **widow** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn orphan-29.7 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **wail** |  | a widowed bird |  |  |  |  |  | nom wail «communication intransitive»: of=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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