---
title: Nigger wid a pocket-hankcher better be looked atter. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: Nigger wid a pocket-hankcher better be looked atter. 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 48

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Nigger wid a pocket-hankcher better be looked atter.

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**Who acts:** Nigger · **What happens:** wi, look, be · **To what, where:** pocket hankcher, better looked atter

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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:pg2306:38:48
# text = Nigger wid a pocket-hankcher better be looked atter.
1	Nigger	nigger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wid	wi	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	pocket	pocket	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	hankcher	hankcher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
7	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	amod	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
9	looked	look	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	amod	_	_
10	atter	atter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wi** | past | Nigger | a pocket hankcher |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is a** | infinitive |  | better looked atter |  |  |  |  | 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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