---
title: Fiddlin' nigger say hit's long ways ter de dance. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: Fiddlin' nigger say hit's long ways ter de dance. Who acts: nigger. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, Plantation Proverbs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, Plantation Proverbs, sentence 45

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Fiddlin' nigger say hit's long ways ter de dance.

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**Who acts:** nigger · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** long ways · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, Plantation Proverbs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nigger), 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:pg2306:38:45
# text = Fiddlin' nigger say hit's long ways ter de dance.
1	Fiddlin	Fiddlin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
3	nigger	nigger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	hit	hit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	ways	way	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
9	ter	ter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
10	de	de	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	dance	dance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	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* | present | Fiddlin's nigger | hit's long ways |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent way=Topic |

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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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