---
title: They have been playing tricks with you." — Indian Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They have been playing tricks with you." Who acts: elephants. A sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 22, 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/pg7128/28/47/)

<!-- 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/) / [Indian Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/) / [Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/28/) / 47

# Indian Fairy Tales, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 22, sentence 47

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They have been playing tricks with you."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** elephants · **What happens:** play · **To what, where:** tricks

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (elephants), 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:pg7128:28:47
# text = They have been playing tricks with you."
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	aux	_	_
4	playing	play	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	tricks	trick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | present · perfect · progressive | elephants *= elephant* | tricks |  |  |  | with you | vn play-114.2-1 «NP V NP PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent trick=Theme with you=Co-Agent |

<!-- .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:** «Indian Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7128 (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 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/28/46/)
- next →: [sentence 48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/28/48/)
- ↑ back to [Demon With Matted Hair " 196, part 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7128/28/)