---
title: A pranked person needs to be told «only joking» before the trick cau… — Funny pranks · tree and pragmatics
description: A pranked person needs to be told «only joking» before the trick causes harm. Who acts: pranked person, trick. A sentence of the lesson «Funny pranks» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Funny pranks, sentence 28

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A pranked person needs to be told «only joking» before the trick causes harm.

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**Who acts:** pranked person, trick · **What happens:** prank, need, tell, joke, cause · **To what, where:** harm · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Funny pranks» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pranked person, trick), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:438-funny-pranks.lesson:28
# text = A pranked person needs to be told «only joking» before the trick causes harm.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 438-funny-pranks.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R8-pos-agree ×2
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	pranked	prank	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	amod	_	_
3	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	needs	need	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	xcomp	_	_
8	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=10:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:,:_
9	only	only	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	joking	joke	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	ccomp	_	_
11	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=10:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:,:_
12	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	causes	cause	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:advcl
16	harm	harm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prank** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **need** | present | a pranked person |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive · passive | a pranked person *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: clause=Topic |
| 4 | **joke** *speech: other* *in a quote* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn chit\_chat-37.6 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **cause** | present | the trick | harm |  |  |  |  | vn engender-27.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition harm=Patient |

<!-- .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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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:everyday:438-funny-pranks.lesson:28`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R8-pos-agree ×2. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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