---
title: Were is a past verb; we're means we are. — Apostrophes: missing letters and belonging · tree and pragmatics
description: Were is a past verb; we're means we are. Who acts: we. A sentence of the lesson «Apostrophes: missing letters and belonging» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Apostrophes: missing letters and belonging, sentence 15

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Were is a past verb; we're means we are.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** past verb · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Apostrophes: missing letters and belonging» 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 (we), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:034-apostrophes-missing-letters-and-belonging.lesson:15
# text = Were is a past verb; we're means we are.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 034-apostrophes-missing-letters-and-belonging.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	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	past	past	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	verb	verb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	're	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | a past verb |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | we |  |  |  |  | mean *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** | present | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:034-apostrophes-missing-letters-and-belonging.lesson:15`.

**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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