---
title: "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? Who acts: I. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, IV. How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, IV. How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox, sentence 4

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"W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** tell, begin · **To what, where:** W'at, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, IV. How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg2306:7:4
# text = "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin?
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	W'at	w'at	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	w'en	w'en	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	fus	fu	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	begin	begin	VERB	VB	Mood=Sub|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | I | W'at | you |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **begin** *in a quote* | infinitive | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

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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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