---
title: The way a character speaks, posh, rough, local or old-fashioned, hel… — Author's choices: why this word, why this way · tree and pragmatics
description: The way a character speaks, posh, rough, local or old-fashioned, helps to show what they are like. Who acts: character, way, animal. A sentence of the lesson «Author's choices: why this word, why this way» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of 
---

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# Author's choices: why this word, why this way, sentence 25

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The way a character speaks, posh, rough, local or old-fashioned, helps to show what they are like.

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**Who acts:** character, way, animal · **What happens:** speak, help, show, be · **To what, where:** way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Author's choices: why this word, why this way» 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 (character, way, animal), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:021-authors-choices-why-this-word-why-this-way.lesson:25
# text = The way a character speaks, posh, rough, local or old-fashioned, helps to show what they are like.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 021-authors-choices-why-this-word-why-this-way.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): no change
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	character	character	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	speaks	speak	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	posh	posh	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	rough	rough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	local	local	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
12	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	_
15	fashioned	fashioned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	helps	help	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	xcomp	_	_
20	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	19	ccomp	_	_
21	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
22	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
23	like	like	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	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 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | a character | the way *not said here* |  |  |  | posh *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **help** | present | the way |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **show** | to-infinitive | the way *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | present | animal |  |  |  |  |  | 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.

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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:english:021-authors-choices-why-this-word-why-this-way.lesson:25`.

**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): no change. **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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