---
title: "Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?" inquired the little b… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?" inquired the little boy. Who acts: you, stirrups, little boy. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXI. a Plantation Witch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXXI. a Plantation Witch, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?" inquired the little boy.

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**Who acts:** you, stirrups, little boy · **What happens:** reckon, ride, inquire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXI. a Plantation Witch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, stirrups, little boy), 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:pg2306:34:19
# text = "Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?" inquired the little boy.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	reckon	reckon	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	aux	_	_
8	riding	ride	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
9	Charley	Charley	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reckon** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **ride** *in a quote* | present · perfect · progressive | stirrups *= stirrup* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | the little boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

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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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