---
title: "'Better tell, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "'Better tell, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. Who acts: Better tell. 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.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, X. Mr. Terrapin Appears Upon the Scene, sentence 46

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"'Better tell, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.

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**Who acts:** Better tell · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** Brer Fox · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Better tell), 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:pg2306:13:46
# text = "'Better tell, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	Better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	amod	_	_
4	tell	tell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	_
7	Rabbit	Rabbit	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
10	sez	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	sezee	sezee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | Better tell | Brer Fox and sezee |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent fox=Topic |

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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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