Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, VII. the Phonograph, sentence 15
"W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes.
Who acts: W'at dey · What happens: fix, ask · To what, where: um fer, one · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, VII. the Phonograph. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (W'at dey), 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 fix | punct |
| 2 | W'at | w'at | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 dey | amod |
| 3 | dey | dey | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 fix | nsubj |
| 4 | fix | fix | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 11 asked | ccomp |
| 5 | um | um | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 fer | compound |
| 6 | fer | fer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 fix | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 den | punct |
| 8 | den | den | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 fer | conj |
| 9 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 4 fix | punct |
| 10 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 fix | punct |
| 11 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 12 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 11 asked | obj |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 16 negroes | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 negroes | det |
| 15 | practical | practical | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 negroes | amod |
| 16 | negroes | negro | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 one | nmod |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 11 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fix in a quote | infinitive | W'at dey | um fer and den | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent fer=Patient | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | one of the practical negroes | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent one=Recipient 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/pg2306/53/15/