---
title: Malians speak a variety of languages, the most widely being Bambara… — Mali · tree and pragmatics
description: Malians speak a variety of languages, the most widely being Bambara spoken as mother tongue by nearly half the population. Who acts: Malians, population. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Mali» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/Mali/389/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [wikipedia](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/) / [en](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/) / [Mali](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/Mali/) / 389

# Mali, sentence 389

<!-- div src -->

From Wikipedia, [«Mali»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali), 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Malians speak a variety of languages, the most widely being Bambara spoken as mother tongue by nearly half the population.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Malians, population · **What happens:** speak, be · **To what, where:** variety, Bambara · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Mali». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Malians, population), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:Mali:389
# text = Malians speak a variety of languages, the most widely being Bambara spoken as mother tongue by nearly half the population.
1	Malians	Malian	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	variety	variety	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	languages	language	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
9	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	10	advmod	_	_
10	widely	widely	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	cop	_	_
12	Bambara	Bambara	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	parataxis	_	_
14	as	as	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	_
16	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	by	by	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
18	nearly	nearly	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	half	half	DET	PDT	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac|PronType=Ind	21	det:predet	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	population	population	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | Malians | a variety of languages |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | gerund |  | the Bambara |  |  |  | widely *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* | participle · passive | half population | the Bambara |  |  |  | as mother tongue | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** the English Wikipedia, «Mali», 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 388](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/Mali/388/)
- next →: [sentence 390](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/Mali/390/)
- ↑ back to [Mali](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/wikipedia/en/Mali/)