---
title: Laughing at someone's dialect is unkind and also wrong about languag… — Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk,… · tree and pragmatics
description: Laughing at someone's dialect is unkind and also wrong about language: every variety of English has grammar. Who acts: Laughing, variety. 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
---

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# Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing, sentence 17

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Laughing at someone's dialect is unkind and also wrong about language: every variety of English has grammar.

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**Who acts:** Laughing, variety · **What happens:** laugh, be, have · **To what, where:** dialect, grammar

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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 (Laughing, variety), 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:17
# text = Laughing at someone's dialect is unkind and also wrong about language: every variety of English has grammar.
# 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): R5-strong ×1
1	Laughing	laugh	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	csubj	_	_
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	's	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	dialect	dialect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	unkind	unkind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	also	also	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
11	about	about	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	language	language	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:obl
13	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
14	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	15	det	_	_
15	variety	variety	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
18	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	_
19	grammar	grammar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | gerund |  |  |  | someone's dialect |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | present | Laughing |  |  |  |  | unkind *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | Laughing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about language | tree rules |
| 4 | **have** | present | every variety of English | grammar |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grammar=Patient |

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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:17`.

**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): R5-strong ×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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