---
title: An accent is the way words sound; any dialect, including Standard En… — Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk,… · tree and pragmatics
description: An accent is the way words sound; any dialect, including Standard English, can be spoken in any accent. Who acts: accent, words. 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
---

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# Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing, sentence 7

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An accent is the way words sound; any dialect, including Standard English, can be spoken in any accent.

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**Who acts:** accent, words · **What happens:** be, sound, speak · **To what, where:** way, dialect, accent · **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 (accent, words), 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:7
# text = An accent is the way words sound; any dialect, including Standard English, can be spoken in any accent.
# 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 ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	accent	accent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	parataxis	_	_
6	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	sound	sound	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	10	det	_	_
10	dialect	dialect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	including	include	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	Standard	Standard	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:conj
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	aux:pass	_	_
18	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	21	det	_	_
21	accent	accent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=18: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 | **is a** | present | a accent | the way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sound** | present | words | the way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location way=Theme |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* | can · passive |  | any dialect include Standard English |  | any accent |  |  | tree rules |

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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:7`.

**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 ×1, 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"…, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/38-standard-english-and-dialect-we-was-and-we-were/8/)
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