---
title: But dat's w'at Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de paper. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: But dat's w'at Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de paper. Who acts: w'at. 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 17

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But dat's w'at Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de paper.

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**Who acts:** w'at · **What happens:** wuz · **To what, where:** readin, de paper

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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), 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:pg2306:53:17
# text = But dat's w'at Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de paper.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	dat	dat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	w'at	w'at	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	Miss	Miss	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	Sally	Sally	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	_
7	wuz	wuz	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	readin	readin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	de	de	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	13	compound	_	_
13	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wuz** | present | dat's w'at | a readin |  | de paper |  |  | 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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