---
title: “Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Da’v. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Da’v. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV, 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/pg2892/86/21/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 21

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“Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Da’v.

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**What happens:** play, say, mac · **To what, where:** trick, Da’v · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg2892:86:21
# text = “Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Da’v.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	mac	mac	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Da’v	Da'v	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | a trick |  |  |  | on men *= man* | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trick=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **mac** | infinitive |  | a Da’v |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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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