---
title: In ole times, 'fo' de wah, I ain't heer tell er no seventy-fi'- year… — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: In ole times, 'fo' de wah, I ain't heer tell er no seventy-fi'- year-ole nigger grapplin' wid no meezles. Who acts: I, ole nigger. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, X. a Case of Measles, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, X. a Case of Measles, sentence 27

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In ole times, 'fo' de wah, I ain't heer tell er no seventy-fi'- year-ole nigger grapplin' wid no meezles.

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**Who acts:** I, ole nigger · **What happens:** not hear, tell, grapple · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, X. a Case of Measles. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, ole nigger), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2306:2130`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2306:56:27
# text = In ole times, 'fo' de wah, I ain't heer tell er no seventy-fi'- year-ole nigger grapplin' wid no meezles.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	ole	ole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
6	fo	before	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
8	de	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	wah	war	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	ai	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	heer	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
15	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
16	er	of	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
17	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	26	det	_	_
18	seventy	seventy	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	20	compound	_	_
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	20	punct	_	_
20	fi	five	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	nummod	_	_
21	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
22	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	23	punct	_	_
23	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obl:unmarked	_	_
24	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	25	punct	_	_
25	ole	ole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
26	nigger	nigger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
27	grapplin	grapple	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	26	acl	_	_
28	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	27	punct	_	_
29	wid	with	ADP	IN	_	31	case	_	_
30	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	31	det	_	_
31	meezles	meezles	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	27	obl	_	_
32	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **hear** | present · passive | I |  |  |  | time |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of no ole nigger | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **grapple** | gerund | no ole nigger *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with no meezles | vn cope-83-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent with meezles=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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