Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black, sentence 1

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery.

Who acts: little boy, Uncle Remus, boy · What happens: watch, twist, wax, make, appear, be · To what, where: Uncle Remus, shoe thread, boy, curious discovery

This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black. 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, Uncle Remus, 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	ONE	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	2 night	nummod
2	night	night	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 made	obl:unmarked
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 watching	punct
4	while	while	SCONJ	_	9 watching	mark
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 boy	det
6	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 boy	amod
7	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 watching	nsubj
8	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 watching	aux
9	watching	watch	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	2 night	advcl
10	Uncle	uncle	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 Remus	compound
11	Remus	remus	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 watching	obj
12	twisting	twist	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	11 Remus	acl
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 waxing	cc
14	waxing	wax	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	12 twisting	conj
15	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	18 thread	det
16	shoe	shoe	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 thread	compound
17	-	-	PUNCT	_	16 shoe	punct
18	thread	thread	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 waxing	obj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 night	punct
20	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 made	nsubj
21	made	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
22	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	23 appeared	nsubj
23	appeared	appear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 made	ccomp
24	to	to	ADP	_	25 him	case
25	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 appeared	obl
26	to	to	PART	_	31 discovery	mark
27	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	31 discovery	cop
28	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	31 discovery	det
29	very	very	ADV	_	30 curious	advmod
30	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	31 discovery	amod
31	discovery	discovery	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 appeared	advcl
32	.	.	PUNCT	_	21 made	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	roles by
1	watch	past · progressive	the little boy	Uncle Remus			vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent remus=Theme
2	twist	gerund	Uncle Remus not said here				vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme
3	wax	gerund	Uncle Remus not said here	some shoe thread			vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location thread=Theme
4	make	past	boy			night	tree rules
5	appear	past			boy		vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
6	is a	to-infinitive		a curious discovery			tree rules

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/pg2306/36/1/