---
title: "Dey comes diffunt," responded the cautious old darkey. " — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "Dey comes diffunt," responded the cautious old darkey. " Who acts: Dey, cautious old darkey. 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 28

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"Dey comes diffunt," responded the cautious old darkey. "

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**Who acts:** Dey, cautious old darkey · **What happens:** come, respond · **To what, where:** diffunt · **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 (Dey, cautious old darkey), 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:pg2306:34:28
# text = "Dey comes diffunt," responded the cautious old darkey. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Dey	dey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	comes	come	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	diffunt	diffunt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	responded	respond	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	obl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	cautious	cautious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	darkey	darkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** *in a quote* | present | Dey | diffunt |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location diffunt=Theme |
| 2 | **respond** *speech: other* | past | the cautious old darkey |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «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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