Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXVII. Why Mr. Possum Has No Hair on His Tail, sentence 33

"Did the Bear have a 'simmon orchard, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked.

Who acts: little boy · What happens: do, have, ask · To what, where: Bear, simmon orchard · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXVII. Why Mr. Possum Has No Hair on His Tail. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little boy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	"	"	PUNCT	_	5 have	punct
2	Did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 have	advcl
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 Bear	det
4	Bear	bear	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 Did	obj
5	have	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	18 asked	ccomp
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 orchard	det
7	'	'	PUNCT	_	9 orchard	punct
8	simmon	simmon	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 orchard	amod
9	orchard	orchard	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 have	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 Remus	punct
11	Uncle	Uncle	PROPN	Number=Sing	12 Remus	compound
12	Remus	Remus	PROPN	Number=Sing	9 orchard	appos
13	?	?	PUNCT	_	5 have	punct
14	"	"	PUNCT	_	5 have	punct
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 boy	det
16	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 boy	amod
17	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 asked	nsubj
18	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	18 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	do in a quote	past		the Bear	vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bear=Eventuality
2	have in a quote	present		a simmon orchard	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent orchard=Patient
3	ask speech: ask	past	the little boy		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic

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.

Text: «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, Project Gutenberg book 2306 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/30/33/