---
title: Britain's West Africa Squadron sought to intercept the smugglers at… — Nigeria · tree and pragmatics
description: Britain's West Africa Squadron sought to intercept the smugglers at sea. Who acts: West Africa. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Nigeria» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

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# Nigeria, sentence 85

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From Wikipedia, [«Nigeria»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria), 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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Britain's West Africa Squadron sought to intercept the smugglers at sea.

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**Who acts:** West Africa · **What happens:** seek, intercept · **To what, where:** smugglers, sea

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This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Nigeria». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (West Africa), 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:Nigeria:85
# text = Britain's West Africa Squadron sought to intercept the smugglers at sea.
1	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	's	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
3	West	West	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	Africa	Africa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	Squadron	Squadron	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	flat	_	_
6	sought	seek	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	intercept	intercept	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	smugglers	smuggler	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seek** | past | Britain's West Africa |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **intercept** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Britain's West Africa *not said here* | the smugglers |  | sea |  |  | vn confront-98 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent smuggler=Theme |

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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, «Nigeria», 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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