---
title: In Multicultural London English "man" can mean "I", as in "Man's goi… — Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk,… · tree and pragmatics
description: In Multicultural London English "man" can mean "I", as in "Man's going shop." Who acts: man. 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 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing, sentence 13

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In Multicultural London English "man" can mean "I", as in "Man's going shop."

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** mean, go · **To what, where:** I, shop · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:038-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were.lesson:13
# text = In Multicultural London English "man" can mean "I", as in "Man's going shop."
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 038-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were.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): R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	Multicultural	Multicultural	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:compound|HaikuPos=PROPN:NNP:Number=Sing
3	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=12:punct
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=9:punct
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
14	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	_
17	Man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
18	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
19	going	go	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	advcl	_	_
20	shop	shop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	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 | **mean** | can | man | I |  |  |  | in Multicultural London English | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot i=Theme in english=Attribute |
| 2 | **go** *in a quote* | present · progressive | Man | shop |  |  |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location shop=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:038-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were.lesson:13`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1. **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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- next →: [Standard English and dialect: "we was"…, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/38-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were/14/)
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