---
title: Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests. Who acts: Mongan. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XV, 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/pg2892/86/22/)

<!-- 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/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter XV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/) / 22

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XV, sentence 22

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Mongan · **What happens:** agree, play · **To what, where:** trick, priests

<!-- .vabout -->
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: who acts (Mongan), 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:pg2892:86:22
# text = Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests.
1	Mongan	Mongan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	agreed	agree	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	priests	priest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **agree** *speech: agree* | past | Mongan |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **play** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Mongan *not said here* | a trick |  | the priests |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trick=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/21/)
- next →: [sentence 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/23/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter XV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/86/)