Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, II. the Wonderful Tar Baby Story, sentence 1
"Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy the next evening.
Who acts: little boy · What happens: not catch, ask · To what, where: rabbit · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, II. the Wonderful Tar Baby Story. 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 | _ | 7 catch | punct |
| 2 | Did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 catch | aux |
| 3 | n't | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 fox | advmod |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 fox | det |
| 5 | fox | fox | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 Did | obl |
| 6 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 7 catch | advmod |
| 7 | catch | catch | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 asked | ccomp |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 rabbit | det |
| 9 | rabbit | rabbit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 catch | obj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 Remus | punct |
| 11 | Uncle | Uncle | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 Remus | compound |
| 12 | Remus | Remus | PROPN | Number=Sing | 7 catch | obl |
| 13 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 7 catch | punct |
| 14 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 7 catch | punct |
| 15 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 boy | det |
| 17 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 18 boy | amod |
| 18 | boy | boy | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 asked | obj |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 evening | det |
| 20 | next | next | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 evening | amod |
| 21 | evening | evening | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 asked | obl:unmarked |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 15 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not catch in a quote | past · do-support | the rabbit | Uncle Remus obl | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rabbit=Theme | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | the little boy | evening | 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/pg2306/5/1/