---
title: "Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low. Who acts: Brer. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, II. the Wonderful Tar Baby Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, II. the Wonderful Tar Baby Story, sentence 9

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"Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low.

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**Who acts:** Brer · **What happens:** lie · **To what, where:** nuthin en

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, II. the Wonderful Tar Baby Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Brer), 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:pg2306:5:9
# text = "Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tar	tar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	Baby	Baby	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	ai	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	sayin	sayin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	_
9	nuthin	nuthin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	',	',	PART	POS	_	9	dep	_	_
11	en	en	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	_
12	Brer	Brer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	_
16	low	low	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** *in a quote* | past | Brer | nuthin en and Brer Fox *not said here* |  |  |  | low *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location en=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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