Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing, sentence 4
Switching between home talk and Standard English depending on who you are with is called code-switching, and most people do it every day without noticing: one voice for mates, another for the head teacher.
Who acts: most people · What happens: switch, depend, call, do, notice · To what, where: code switching, switching, one voice · 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 (most people), 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 | Switching | switch | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 15 called | nsubj:pass |
| 2 | between | between | ADP | _ | 4 talk | case |
| 3 | home | home | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 talk | compound |
| 4 | talk | talk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 1 Switching | obl |
| 5 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 English | cc |
| 6 | Standard | standard | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 English | amod |
| 7 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 4 talk | conj |
| 8 | depending | depend | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 1 Switching | acl |
| 9 | on | on | ADP | _ | 8 depending | case |
| 10 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 13 with | obl |
| 11 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 13 with | nsubj |
| 12 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 with | cop |
| 13 | with | with | ADP | _ | 8 depending | obl |
| 14 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 called | aux:pass |
| 15 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 16 | code | code | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 switching | compound |
| 17 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 16 code | punct |
| 18 | switching | switching | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 called | xcomp |
| 19 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 23 do | punct |
| 20 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 23 do | cc |
| 21 | most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 22 people | amod |
| 22 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 do | nsubj |
| 23 | do | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 called | conj |
| 24 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 23 do | obj |
| 25 | every | every | DET | PronType=Tot | 26 day | det |
| 26 | day | day | NOUN | Number=Sing | 23 do | obl:unmarked |
| 27 | without | without | SCONJ | _ | 28 noticing | mark |
| 28 | noticing | notice | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 23 do | advcl |
| 29 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 31 voice | punct |
| 30 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 31 voice | nummod |
| 31 | voice | voice | NOUN | Number=Sing | 28 noticing | obl |
| 32 | for | for | ADP | _ | 33 mates | case |
| 33 | mates | mate | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 voice | nmod |
| 34 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 35 another | punct |
| 35 | another | another | DET | PronType=Ind | 15 called | conj |
| 36 | for | for | ADP | _ | 39 teacher | case |
| 37 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 39 teacher | det |
| 38 | head | head | NOUN | Number=Sing | 39 teacher | compound |
| 39 | teacher | teacher | NOUN | Number=Sing | 35 another | obl |
| 40 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 15 called | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- narrate
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- kept the draft
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | switch | gerund | between home talk and Standard English | vn convert-26.6.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient | |||||
| 2 | depend | gerund | vn rely-70 «NP V PP.theme S_ING»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 3 | call | present · passive | code switching | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient | |||||
| 4 | do | present | most people | switching | day | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality | |||
| 5 | notice | gerund | most people not said here | one voice for mates | vn see-30.1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
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:4.
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): 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/4/