---
title: "What did they do, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. — Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings · tree and pragmatics
description: "What did they do, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. Who acts: ter, 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/8/9/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/) / [V. the Story of the Deluge and How It…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/8/) / 9

# Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, V. the Story of the Deluge and How It Came About, sentence 9

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"What did they do, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** ter, little boy · **What happens:** do, uncle, ask · **To what, where:** Remus · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (ter, little boy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2306:8:9
# text = "What did they do, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	Uncle	uncle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
8	Remus	Remus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | past · do-support | ter |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **uncle** *in a quote* | infinitive | ter *not said here* | Remus |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the little boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/8/8/)
- next →: [sentence 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/8/10/)
- ↑ back to [V. the Story of the Deluge and How It Came About](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2306/8/)