---
title: Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w'en we 'uz all niggers terg… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w'en we 'uz all niggers tergedder." Who acts: Niggers. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black, sentence 12

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Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w'en we 'uz all niggers tergedder."

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**Who acts:** Niggers · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** niggers

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXIII. Why the Negro Is Black. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Niggers), 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:pg2306:36:12
# text = Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w'en we 'uz all niggers tergedder."
1	Niggers	nigger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	niggers	nigger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
4	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	de	de	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	8	compound	_	_
8	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
9	wuz	wuz	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	w'en	w'en	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
11	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	uz	uz	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	10	conj	_	_
14	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	16	det	_	_
15	niggers	nigger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	compound	_	_
16	tergedder	tergedder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Niggers | niggers but time wuz w'en |  |  | now |  | 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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