---
title: "'I'm a tellin' my chilluns w'at a nice man you is, Brer Wolf.' — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "'I'm a tellin' my chilluns w'at a nice man you is, Brer Wolf.' Who acts: Tobacco, chilluns, tellin. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XIII. the Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XIII. the Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf, sentence 50

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"'I'm a tellin' my chilluns w'at a nice man you is, Brer Wolf.'

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**Who acts:** Tobacco, chilluns, tellin · **What happens:** be, w'at · **To what, where:** tellin, nice man, Brer Wolf

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XIII. the Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Tobacco, chilluns, tellin), 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:pg2306:16:50
# text = "'I'm a tellin' my chilluns w'at a nice man you is, Brer Wolf.'
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	'm	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	tellin	tellin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	chilluns	chillun	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	w'at	w'at	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
18	Wolf	Wolf	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Tobacco | a tellin |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **w'at** *in a quote* | past | my chilluns | a nice man |  |  |  | you *obl* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | a tellin | Brer Wolf |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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