---
title: "'I speck dat butter melt in somebody mouf,' sezee. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "'I speck dat butter melt in somebody mouf,' sezee. Who acts: Uncle Remus. 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.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XVII. Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter, sentence 41

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"'I speck dat butter melt in somebody mouf,' sezee.

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**Who acts:** Uncle Remus · **What happens:** speck, melt · **To what, where:** dat butter, somebody mouf

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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: who acts (Uncle Remus), 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:pg2306:20:41
# text = "'I speck dat butter melt in somebody mouf,' sezee.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	speck	speck	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	dat	dat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	melt	melt	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	somebody	somebody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	compound	_	_
10	mouf	mouf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	_
13	sezee	sezee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speck** *in a quote* | present | Uncle Remus *= remus* | dat butter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **melt** *in a quote* | present | Uncle Remus *= remus* *not said here* |  |  | somebody mouf and sezee |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP.patient V»: agent=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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