---
title: The commercial and administrative center gradually shifted northward… — Damascus · tree and pragmatics
description: The commercial and administrative center gradually shifted northwards towards this area. Who acts: commercial center. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Damascus» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

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# Damascus, sentence 55

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From Wikipedia, [«Damascus»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus), 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 commercial and administrative center gradually shifted northwards towards this area.

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**Who acts:** commercial center · **What happens:** shift

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This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Damascus». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (commercial center), 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:Damascus:55
# text = The commercial and administrative center gradually shifted northwards towards this area.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
2	commercial	commercial	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	administrative	administrative	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	_
5	center	center	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	gradually	gradually	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	shifted	shift	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	northwards	northwards	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
9	towards	towards	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	det	_	_
11	area	area	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shift** | past | the commercial center |  |  |  |  | towards this area; gradually, northwards *property* | vn caused\_calibratable\_cos-45.6.2-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=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, «Damascus», 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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