---
title: "Where was the Rabbit?" the little boy asked. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "Where was the Rabbit?" the little boy asked. Who acts: Rabbit. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXX. How Mr. Rabbit Succeeded in Raising a Dust, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXX. How Mr. Rabbit Succeeded in Raising a Dust, sentence 15

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"Where was the Rabbit?" the little boy asked.

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**Who acts:** Rabbit · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXX. How Mr. Rabbit Succeeded in Raising a Dust. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Rabbit), 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:pg2306:33:15
# text = "Where was the Rabbit?" the little boy asked.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Rabbit	rabbit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past | the Rabbit |  |  |  |  | where *property* | 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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