---
title: "Where was the ark, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired, presently. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "Where was the ark, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired, presently. Who acts: ark, little boy. A sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, V. the Story of the Deluge and How It Came About, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, V. the Story of the Deluge and How It Came About, sentence 24

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"Where was the ark, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired, presently.

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**Who acts:** ark, little boy · **What happens:** be, inquire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, V. the Story of the Deluge and How It Came About. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ark, little boy), 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:pg2306:377`): 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:pg2306:8:24
# text = "Where was the ark, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired, presently.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	ccomp	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	ark	ark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	Uncle	Uncle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	Remus	Remus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	vocative	_	_
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	presently	presently	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past | the ark |  |  |  |  | Uncle Remus *vocative*; where *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | the little boy |  |  |  |  | presently *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** 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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