---
title: The pearl diving business was a key industry prior to the discovery… — Abu Dhabi · tree and pragmatics
description: The pearl diving business was a key industry prior to the discovery of oil reserves. Who acts: pearl. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Abu Dhabi» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

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# Abu Dhabi, sentence 26

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From Wikipedia, [«Abu Dhabi»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Dhabi), revision of the 2026-09-01 dump, [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). The trees and pragmatics of these pages, Mova's parse of that text, are CC BY-SA 4.0 too.

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The pearl diving business was a key industry prior to the discovery of oil reserves.

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**Who acts:** pearl · **What happens:** dive, be, discover · **To what, where:** business, key industry, oil reserves

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This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Abu Dhabi». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pearl), 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 article's note marks are left out of the parse.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = wikipedia:Abu_Dhabi:26
# text = The pearl diving business was a key industry prior to the discovery of oil reserves.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	pearl	pearl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	diving	dive	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
4	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	key	key	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	industry	industry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	prior	prior	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|ExtPos=ADP	12	case	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	fixed	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	discovery	discovery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	oil	oil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	reserves	reserve	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dive** | gerund | the pearl *not said here* | business |  |  |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location business=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the pearl | a key industry |  |  |  | prior the discovery of oil reserves | tree rules |
| 3 | **discover** |  |  | oil reserves |  |  |  |  | nom discovery «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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:** the English Wikipedia, «Abu Dhabi», revision of the 2026-09-01 dump, CC BY-SA 4.0. **Tree:** Mova's own parse, CC BY-SA 4.0 as the text is. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the article read in order, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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