---
title: “Hardly,” said the Horse, “can I resist kicking you with my heels.” — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: “Hardly,” said the Horse, “can I resist kicking you with my heels.” Who acts: Horse. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 10, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 10, sentence 123

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“Hardly,” said the Horse, “can I resist kicking you with my heels.”

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**Who acts:** Horse · **What happens:** say, resist, kick · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Horse), 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:pg21:12:123
# text = “Hardly,” said the Horse, “can I resist kicking you with my heels.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	resist	resist	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
13	kicking	kick	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	xcomp	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	heels	heel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Horse |  |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **resist** *in a quote* | can | the Horse *= horse* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **kick** *in a quote* | gerund | the Horse *= horse* *not said here* | you |  |  |  | with my heels | vn swat-18.2 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent you=Patient with heel=Instrument |

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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:** «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 21 (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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