---
title: ‘Let them take their silliness home,’ said the empress. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Let them take their silliness home,’ said the empress. Who acts: cushions. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, 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/pg641/35/125/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/) / 125

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 125

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Let them take their silliness home,’ said the empress.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** cushions · **What happens:** let, take, say · **To what, where:** cushions, silliness, empress · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cushions), 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:pg641:35:125
# text = ‘Let them take their silliness home,’ said the empress.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	silliness	silliness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	home	home	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	empress	empress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | infinitive |  | cushions *= cushion* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **take** | infinitive | cushions *= cushion* *not said here* | cushions's silliness |  |  |  | home *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent silliness=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the empress |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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:** «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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 124](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/124/)
- next →: [sentence 126](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/126/)
- ↑ back to [The Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/)