--- title: Off with her head and the finest house on the river: Alice and Toad — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Off with her head and the finest house on the river: Alice and Toad», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame both loved hyperbole and understatement, and they made jokes out of --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Off with her head and the finest house… # Off with her head and the finest house on the river: Alice and Toad Lesson 54 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/0/) — Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame both loved hyperbole and understatement, and they made jokes out of them. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/1/) — Carroll often takes a big saying and makes it really happen; Grahame gives us Toad, the greatest boaster on the river bank. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/3/) — People say «she cried buckets»; Carroll makes the buckets real, and later, when Alice has shrunk, she has to swim in her own tears. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/4/) — The Queen of Hearts shouts «Off with her head!» at everyone, but the Gryphon tells Alice: «It's all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know». - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/5/) — Her threats are hyperbole, like a cross big sister's. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/7/) — The bigger the boast, the sillier he looks — and the more we laugh. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/8/) — Understatement can be kind, too: when the Mole tips the boat over, the Rat just laughs, «What's a little wet to a Water Rat?» - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/9/) — Falling down the rabbit hole, Alice thinks «after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs!» — a boast that she will now be very brave. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/10/) — Alice goes on «I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!» and Carroll adds «(Which was very likely true.)» — a dark joke: after such a fall she wouldn't be able to say anything. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/12/) — The White Rabbit always panics about time: «Oh dear! - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/13/) — I shall be late!» and «Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!»; he is a funny, exaggerated worrier. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/16/) — When the Mole politely praises Toad Hall, Toad cries «Finest house on the whole river», and then cannot help adding «Or anywhere else, for that matter». - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/17/) — Toad's song boasts: «The clever men at Oxford / Know all that there is to be knowed. / But they none of them know one half as much / As intelligent Mr. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/18/) — Toad!» — he is not cleverer than the university teachers, and «knowed» is a deliberately wrong word for «known». - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/19/) — The Rat tells the Mole there is «nothing — absolute nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats»; it is a loving exaggeration, the way people talk about what they love most. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/54-off-with-her-head-and-the-finest-house-on-the-river-alice-and-toad/22/) — I'm more in the water than out of it most days» — kind understatement that makes the Mole feel better. - ← previous: [Told you a hundred times: how other languages exaggerate and play down](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/53-told-you-a-hundred-times-how-other-languages-exaggerate-and-play-down/) - next →: [★★★ Olympiad: hyperbole and downplaying puzzles](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)