---
title: De big uns had big pails, en de little uns had little pails. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: De big uns had big pails, en de little uns had little pails. Who acts: De big uns, big pails. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, IX. Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, IX. Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit, sentence 31

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De big uns had big pails, en de little uns had little pails.

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**Who acts:** De big uns, big pails · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** little pails

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, IX. Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (De big uns, big pails), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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 {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2306:12:31
# text = De big uns had big pails, en de little uns had little pails.
1	De	De	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
2	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	uns	un	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	pails	pail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	en	en	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	de	de	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	6	conj	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	uns	un	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
13	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	pails	pail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | De big uns |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | big pails and en | little pails |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pail=Patient |

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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.

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**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.

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