---
title: That night all the wives cried bitterly. — Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria · tree and pragmatics
description: That night all the wives cried bitterly. Who acts: night. A sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xii.--concerning the Okuni Witches and Cannibalism., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Xii.--concerning the Okuni Witches and Cannibalism., sentence 13

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That night all the wives cried bitterly.

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**Who acts:** night · **What happens:** cry

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This is a sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xii.--concerning the Okuni Witches and Cannibalism.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (night), 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:pg70959:9:13
# text = That night all the wives cried bitterly.
1	That	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	5	det:predet	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	wives	wife	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
6	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	bitterly	bitterly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | that night  all wives |  |  |  |  | bitterly *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: 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:** «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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