---
title: "'W'at de matter now, Brer Possum?' sezee. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "'W'at de matter now, Brer Possum?' sezee. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter, 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/pg2306/20/35/)

<!-- 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/) / [XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/20/) / 35

# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter, sentence 35

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"'W'at de matter now, Brer Possum?' sezee.

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** matter · **To what, where:** W'at

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg2306:20:35
# text = "'W'at de matter now, Brer Possum?' sezee.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	W'at	W'at	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	de	de	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	3	flat:foreign	_	_
5	matter	matter	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	Possum	Possum	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	sezee	sezee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **matter** *in a quote* | present |  | W'at |  |  | now | Brer Possum *vocative*; sezee *obl:unmarked* | vn matter-91 «NP V»: agent=Stimulus |

<!-- .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 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/20/34/)
- next →: [sentence 36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/20/36/)
- ↑ back to [XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/20/)