---
title: That night there was heavy rain. — Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria · tree and pragmatics
description: That night there was heavy rain. Who acts: heavy rain. A sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xxix.--why a Python Never Swallows a Tortoise., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Xxix.--why a Python Never Swallows a Tortoise., sentence 25

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That night there was heavy rain.

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**Who acts:** heavy rain · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xxix.--why a Python Never Swallows a Tortoise.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (heavy rain), 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:pg70959:22:25
# text = That night there was heavy rain.
1	That	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
4	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | heavy rain |  |  | there | night |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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:** «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Project Gutenberg book 70959 (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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