---
title: Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho nuff de butt… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho nuff de butter done gone. Who acts: Den dey. 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 42

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Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho nuff de butter done gone.

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**Who acts:** Den dey · **What happens:** go down, do · **To what, where:** ter

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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 (Den dey), 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:pg2306:20:42
# text = Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho nuff de butter done gone.
1	Den	den	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	dey	dey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	down	down	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	ter	ter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	de	de	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
8	wid	wid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	Possum	possum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	en	en	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
13	sho	sho	X	FW	_	14	compound	_	_
14	nuff	nuff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
15	de	de	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	14	flat:foreign	_	_
16	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	conj	_	_
17	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
18	gone	gone	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go down** | past | Den dey | ter |  |  |  | de wid Brer Possum and en and sho nuff and butter; down *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **do** | participle | Den dey *not said here* |  |  |  |  | gone *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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