---
title: Some niggers mighty smart, but dey can't drive de pidgins ter roos'. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: Some niggers mighty smart, but dey can't drive de pidgins ter roos'. Who acts: dey, de pidgins. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/38/55/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/) / [Plantation Proverbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/38/) / 55

# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, Plantation Proverbs, sentence 55

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Some niggers mighty smart, but dey can't drive de pidgins ter roos'.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** dey, de pidgins · **What happens:** not drive, ter · **To what, where:** roos

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (dey, de pidgins), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2306:38:55
# text = Some niggers mighty smart, but dey can't drive de pidgins ter roos'.
1	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	2	det	_	_
2	niggers	nigger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	mighty	mighty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	smart	smart	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	dey	dey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
8	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	drive	drive	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
11	de	de	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	pidgins	pidgin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	ter	ter	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	parataxis	_	_
14	roos	roo	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **drive** | can | dey |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP.agent V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **ter** | present | de pidgins | roos |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 54](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/38/54/)
- next →: [sentence 56](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/38/56/)
- ↑ back to [Plantation Proverbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/38/)