---
title: "I beg that you won't play tricks with a poor boy like me," he said. " — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "I beg that you won't play tricks with a poor boy like me," he said. " Who acts: I, you, lad. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/18/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, V. the Fortune., sentence 18

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"I beg that you won't play tricks with a poor boy like me," he said. "

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**Who acts:** I, you, lad · **What happens:** beg, not play, say · **To what, where:** tricks · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, you, lad), 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:pg18442:53:18
# text = "I beg that you won't play tricks with a poor boy like me," he said. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	beg	beg	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	ccomp	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	wo	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	tricks	trick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
14	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
18	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	punct	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beg** *speech: request* *in a quote* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **play** *in a quote* | future | you | tricks |  |  |  | with a poor boy; like me | vn play-114.2-1 «NP V NP PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent trick=Theme with boy=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | lad |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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