---
title: "But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy sugg… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy suggested. Who acts: mamma, Chinese, little boy. 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 23

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"But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy suggested.

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**Who acts:** mamma, Chinese, little boy · **What happens:** say, have, suggest · **To what, where:** straight hair · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (mamma, Chinese, 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:pg2306:36:23
# text = "But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy suggested.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	mamma	mamma	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Chinese	Chinese	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	straight	straight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	suggested	suggest	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | mamma |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | present | the Chinese | straight hair |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hair=Patient |
| 3 | **suggest** *speech: suggest* | past | the little boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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