---
title: The old man pretended not to hear. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: The old man pretended not to hear. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XX. How Mr. Rabbit Saved His Meat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XX. How Mr. Rabbit Saved His Meat, sentence 13

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The old man pretended not to hear.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** pretend, not hear

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XX. How Mr. Rabbit Saved His Meat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man), 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:pg2306:23:13
# text = The old man pretended not to hear.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	pretended	pretend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pretend** | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **hear** | to-infinitive | the old man *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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