---
title: "You think they are improving, then?" — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "You think they are improving, then?" Who acts: You, ter. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, VIII. Race Improvement, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, VIII. Race Improvement, sentence 15

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"You think they are improving, then?"

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**Who acts:** You, ter · **What happens:** think, improve · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, VIII. Race Improvement. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, ter), 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:pg2306:54:15
# text = "You think they are improving, then?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	improving	improve	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | You |  |  |  | then |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **improve** *in a quote* | present · progressive | ter |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

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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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