---
title: Meanwhile, Britain became involved in southern Iran to counter Russi… — Iran · tree and pragmatics
description: Meanwhile, Britain became involved in southern Iran to counter Russia's presence in the north, which posed a threat to British India. Who acts: Britain, presence. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Iran» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

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# Iran, sentence 144

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From Wikipedia, [«Iran»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran), 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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Meanwhile, Britain became involved in southern Iran to counter Russia's presence in the north, which posed a threat to British India.

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**Who acts:** Britain, presence · **What happens:** become, counter, pose · **To what, where:** southern Iran, presence, north, threat, British India

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This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Iran». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Britain, presence), 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:Iran:144
# text = Meanwhile, Britain became involved in southern Iran to counter Russia's presence in the north, which posed a threat to British India.
1	Meanwhile	meanwhile	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	involved	involved	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	southern	southern	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	Iran	Iran	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	counter	counter	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
11	Russia	Russia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	presence	presence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	north	north	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
19	posed	pose	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	threat	threat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
22	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	India	India	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **become** | past | Britain |  |  |  |  | in southern Iran *result*; involved, meanwhile *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient in iran=Result |
| 2 | **counter** | to-infinitive | Britain *not said here* | Russia's presence |  | the north |  |  | vn confront-98 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent presence=Theme |
| 3 | **pose** | past | Russia's presence | a threat | British India |  |  |  | vn reflexive\_appearance-48.1.2 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent threat=Theme to india=Recipient |

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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, «Iran», 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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