---
title: The agricultural editor was the first to open fire: — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: The agricultural editor was the first to open fire: Who acts: agricultural editor. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXI. the Fourth of July, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXI. the Fourth of July, sentence 4

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The agricultural editor was the first to open fire:

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**Who acts:** agricultural editor · **What happens:** be, open · **To what, where:** fire

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXI. the Fourth of July. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (agricultural editor), 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:pg2306:67:4
# text = The agricultural editor was the first to open fire:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	agricultural	agricultural	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	editor	editor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl	_	_
9	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the agricultural editor |  |  |  |  | first *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **open** | to-infinitive |  | fire |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location fire=Theme |

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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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