---
title: "A mighty big w'ich?" asked one of the crowd. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "A mighty big w'ich?" asked one of the crowd. Who acts: mighty big w'ich. 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 5

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"A mighty big w'ich?" asked one of the crowd.

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**Who acts:** mighty big w'ich · **What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** one

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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 (mighty big w'ich), 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:pg2306:53:5
# text = "A mighty big w'ich?" asked one of the crowd.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	mighty	mighty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	w'ich	w'ich	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	obj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | a mighty big w'ich | one of the crowd |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent one=Recipient |

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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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