---
title: "We was" is used in many British dialects; standard English says "we… — Is there one proper English? The big arguments · tree and pragmatics
description: "We was" is used in many British dialects; standard English says "we were". Who acts: standard English, we. A sentence of the lesson «Is there one proper English? The big arguments» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Is there one proper English? The big arguments, sentence 11

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"We was" is used in many British dialects; standard English says "we were".

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**Who acts:** standard English, we · **What happens:** use, say, be · **To what, where:** We, many British dialects · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Is there one proper English? The big arguments» of the language 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 (standard English, we), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:020-is-there-one-proper-english.lesson:11
# text = "We was" is used in many British dialects; standard English says "we were".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 020-is-there-one-proper-english.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
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	dep	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	used	use	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	dialects	dialect	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	standard	standard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	_
16	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	ccomp	_	_
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	17	punct	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **use** | present · passive |  | We |  | many British dialects |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | standard English |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **be** *in a quote* | past | 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:language:020-is-there-one-proper-english.lesson:11`.

**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. **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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