Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing, sentence 14
In Bristol "Where's it to?" means "Where is it?"; in Singapore English "Can or not?" means "Is that possible?" or "Is that okay?"
Who acts: shop, that · What happens: be, mean · To what, where: Bristol · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing» of the english 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 (shop, that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | In | in | ADP | _ | 2 Bristol | case |
| 2 | Bristol | Bristol | PROPN | Number=Sing | 4 Where | obl |
| 3 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 Where | punct |
| 4 | Where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 10 means | ccomp |
| 5 | 's | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 Where | cop |
| 6 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 Where | nsubj |
| 7 | to | to | ADV | _ | 4 Where | advmod |
| 8 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 4 Where | punct |
| 9 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 Where | punct |
| 10 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 11 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 12 Where | punct |
| 12 | Where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 27 means | nsubj |
| 13 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 12 Where | cop |
| 14 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 Where | nsubj |
| 15 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 12 Where | punct |
| 16 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 12 Where | punct |
| 17 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 20 English | punct |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 20 English | case |
| 19 | Singapore | Singapore | PROPN | Number=Sing | 20 English | compound |
| 20 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 Where | appos |
| 21 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 22 Can | punct |
| 22 | Can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 12 Where | aux |
| 23 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 24 not | cc |
| 24 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 22 Can | conj |
| 25 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 22 Can | punct |
| 26 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 22 Can | punct |
| 27 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 10 means | parataxis |
| 28 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 31 possible | punct |
| 29 | Is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 31 possible | cop |
| 30 | that | that | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 31 possible | nsubj |
| 31 | possible | possible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 27 means | ccomp |
| 32 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 31 possible | punct |
| 33 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 31 possible | punct |
| 34 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 38 okay | cc |
| 35 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 38 okay | punct |
| 36 | Is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 38 okay | cop |
| 37 | that | that | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 38 okay | nsubj |
| 38 | okay | okay | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 31 possible | conj |
| 39 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 38 okay | punct |
| 40 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 38 okay | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is in a quote | present | shop | Bristol | where property | tree rules | |||
| 2 | mean | present | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 3 | is in a quote | can · present | shop | where property | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | mean | present | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 5 | is in a quote | present | that | possible property | tree rules | ||||
| 6 | is in a quote | present | that | okay property | tree rules |
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.
Licence: CC 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:english:038-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were.lesson:14.
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): R1-cc-next ×1, R6-punct-agree ×4, R7-rel-agree ×2. 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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/38-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were/14/