---
title: "Silly" comes from Old English "sælig", meaning blessed or happy; it… — Words that changed their meaning · tree and pragmatics
description: "Silly" comes from Old English "sælig", meaning blessed or happy; it later meant innocent, and then foolish. Who acts: Silly, Old English sælig. A sentence of the lesson «Words that changed their meaning» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of 
---

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# Words that changed their meaning, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Silly" comes from Old English "sælig", meaning blessed or happy; it later meant innocent, and then foolish.

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**Who acts:** Silly, Old English sælig · **What happens:** come, mean · **To what, where:** Old English sælig

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Words that changed their meaning» of the language course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Silly, Old English sælig), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.lesson:6
# text = "Silly" comes from Old English "sælig", meaning blessed or happy; it later meant innocent, and then foolish.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Silly	silly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
4	comes	come	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	from	from	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	Old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
7	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_
9	sælig	sælig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	meaning	mean	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
13	blessed	blessed	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	conj	_	_
16	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
18	later	late	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	19	advmod	_	_
19	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:advcl
20	innocent	innocent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	xcomp	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
23	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	24	advmod	_	_
24	foolish	foolish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | present | Silly |  |  | Old English sælig |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme from sælig=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **mean** | gerund | Old English sælig *not said here* |  |  |  |  | blessed *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **mean** | past | silly |  |  |  |  | innocent, late *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:language:038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.lesson:6`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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