---
title: "W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes. Who acts: W'at dey. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, VII. the Phonograph, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, VII. the Phonograph, sentence 15

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"W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes.

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**Who acts:** W'at dey · **What happens:** fix, ask · **To what, where:** um fer, one · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, VII. the Phonograph. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (W'at dey), 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:pg2306:53:15
# text = "W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	W'at	w'at	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	dey	dey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	fix	fix	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	um	um	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	fer	fer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	den	den	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	practical	practical	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	negroes	negro	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fix** *in a quote* | infinitive | W'at dey | um fer and den |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent fer=Patient |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  | one of the practical negroes |  |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent one=Recipient clause=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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