Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black, sentence 23

"But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy suggested.

Who acts: mamma, Chinese, little boy · What happens: say, have, suggest · To what, where: straight hair · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (mamma, Chinese, 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	_	4 says	punct
2	But	but	CCONJ	_	4 says	cc
3	mamma	mamma	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 says	nsubj
4	says	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 Chinese	det
6	Chinese	Chinese	PROPN	Number=Plur	7 have	nsubj
7	have	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 says	ccomp
8	straight	straight	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 hair	amod
9	hair	hair	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 have	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 suggested	punct
11	"	"	PUNCT	_	15 suggested	punct
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 boy	det
13	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 boy	amod
14	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 suggested	nsubj
15	suggested	suggest	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 have	advcl
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 says	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	say speech: assert in a quote	present	mamma		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	have in a quote	present	the Chinese	straight hair	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hair=Patient
3	suggest speech: suggest	past	the little boy		vn say-37.7-1-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent

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/pg2306/36/23/