---
title: Neither side is wrong: "colour" is right in Britain and "color" is r… — British and American words · tree and pragmatics
description: Neither side is wrong: "colour" is right in Britain and "color" is right in America, just as "lift" and "elevator" are both proper words for the same machine. Who acts: side, colour, color, lift. A sentence of the lesson «British and American words» of the language course of Mova's primary school wi
---

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# British and American words, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Neither side is wrong: "colour" is right in Britain and "color" is right in America, just as "lift" and "elevator" are both proper words for the same machine.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** side, colour, color, lift · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** Britain, America, proper words

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «British and American words» 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 (side, colour, color, lift), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:021-british-and-american-words.lesson:2
# text = Neither side is wrong: "colour" is right in Britain and "color" is right in America, just as "lift" and "elevator" are both proper words for the same machine.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 021-british-and-american-words.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	Neither	neither	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
7	colour	colour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	right	right	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	parataxis	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
15	color	color	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	right	right	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	America	America	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
22	just	just	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	_
23	as	as	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	25	punct	_	_
25	lift	lift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	34	nsubj	_	_
26	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	25	punct	_	_
27	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	29	cc	_	_
28	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	29	punct	_	_
29	elevator	elevator	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	conj	_	_
30	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	29	punct	_	_
31	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	34	cop	_	_
32	both	both	ADV	RB	_	33	advmod	_	_
33	proper	proper	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	34	amod	_	_
34	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	parataxis	_	_
35	for	for	ADP	IN	_	38	case	_	_
36	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	38	det	_	_
37	same	same	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	38	amod	_	_
38	machine	machine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	34	nmod	_	_
39	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed polarity=pos

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | neither side |  |  |  |  | wrong *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | colour |  |  | Britain |  | right *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | present | color |  |  | America |  | right *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **is a** | present | lift and elevator | proper words |  |  |  | for the same machine | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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:021-british-and-american-words.lesson:2`.

**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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