---
title: During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging… — Tuvalu · tree and pragmatics
description: During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Who acts: frequent canoe. A sentence of Wikipedia's «Tuvalu» with its dependency tree and pragmatics.
---

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# Tuvalu, sentence 23

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From Wikipedia, [«Tuvalu»](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu), 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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During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga.

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**Who acts:** frequent canoe · **What happens:** be, voyage

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This is a sentence of the English Wikipedia article «Tuvalu». The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (frequent canoe), 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:Tuvalu:23
# text = During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga.
1	During	during	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	pre-European-contact	pre-european-contact	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	6	expl	_	_
6	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	frequent	frequent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	canoe	canoe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
9	voyaging	voyage	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	between	between	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	nearer	near	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	amod	_	_
13	islands	island	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
14	including	including	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	Samoa	Samoa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	Tonga	Tonga	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | frequent canoe |  |  | there | time |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **voyage** | gerund | frequent canoe *not said here* |  |  |  |  | between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga | tree rules |

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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, «Tuvalu», 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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