---
title: De spring-house may freeze, but de niggers 'll keep de shuck-pen war… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: De spring-house may freeze, but de niggers 'll keep de shuck-pen warm. ' Who acts: De spring house, de niggers. 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 65

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De spring-house may freeze, but de niggers 'll keep de shuck-pen warm. '

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**Who acts:** De spring house, de niggers · **What happens:** freeze, keep · **To what, where:** de shuck pen

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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 (De spring house, de 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:pg2306:38:65
# text = De spring-house may freeze, but de niggers 'll keep de shuck-pen warm. '
1	De	De	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
2	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	freeze	freeze	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	de	de	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	niggers	nigger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
11	'll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
13	de	de	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
14	shuck	shuck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	pen	pen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
17	warm	warm	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
19	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **freeze** | may | De spring house |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **keep** | future | de niggers | de shuck pen |  |  |  | warm *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pen=Theme |

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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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