---
title: But the mole kicked him with his bandy legs and said: — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the mole kicked him with his bandy legs and said: Who acts: mole. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), sentence 157

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But the mole kicked him with his bandy legs and said:

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**Who acts:** mole · **What happens:** kick, say · **To what, where:** visitor · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mole), 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:pg640:47:157
# text = But the mole kicked him with his bandy legs and said:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mole	mole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	kicked	kick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
8	bandy	bandy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kick** | past | the mole | visitor |  |  |  | with mole's bandy legs | vn swat-18.2 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent he=Patient with leg=Instrument |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the mole *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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