---
title: "'W'at you laughin' at, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "'W'at you laughin' at, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. Who acts: you, W'at laughin. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/13/44/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/) / [X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/13/) / 44

# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene, sentence 44

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"'W'at you laughin' at, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, W'at laughin · **What happens:** laughin, say · **To what, where:** Brer Fox · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, W'at laughin), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2306:13:44
# text = "'W'at you laughin' at, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	W'at	W'at	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	laughin	laughin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	Rabbit	Rabbit	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	sez	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	sezee	sezee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laughin** *in a quote* |  | you |  |  |  |  | at Brer Rabbit | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | W'at laughin | Brer Fox and sezee |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent fox=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 43](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/13/43/)
- next →: [sentence 45](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/13/45/)
- ↑ back to [X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/13/)